scholarly journals Production and perception of the English /æ/–/ɑ/ contrast in switched-dominance speakers

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V Casillas ◽  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Age At Onset ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
Vowel Contrast ◽  
Communicative Abilities ◽  
Shed Light

This study investigates how fluent second-language (L2) learners of English produce and perceive the /æ/–/ɑ/ vowel contrast of Southwestern American English. Two learner groups are examined: (1) early, proficient English speakers who were raised by Spanish-speaking families but who became dominant in English during childhood and, as adults, lack communicative abilities in Spanish, and (2) Spanish-speaking late learners of English who continue to be dominant in Spanish. The participants provided data in three tasks: one production and two perceptual. The study finds that both learner groups differ from native controls in their production and perception of the /æ/–/ɑ/ contrast. The findings shed light on our understanding of the relative effects of age (at onset of language exposure) and language dominance (at time of testing) by showing that sequential bilingualism impacts phonetic behavior even when speakers have become dominant in the target language.

The role of cross-linguistic stress pattern frequency and word similarity on the acquisition of English stress pattern by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Post Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
American English ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Stress Pattern ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English As Second Language ◽  
Word Similarity ◽  
L1 Transfer

This is a preliminary study in which we investigate the acquisition of English as second language (L2[1]) word stress by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP, L1[2]). In this paper, we show results of a multiple choice forced choice perception test in which native speakers of American English and native speakers of Dutch judged the production of English words bearing pre-final stress that were both cognates and non-cognates with BP words. The tokens were produced by native speakers of American English and by Brazilians that speak English as a second language. The results have shown that American and Dutch listeners were consistent in their judgments on native and non-native stress productions and both speakers' groups produced variation in stress in relation to the canonical pattern. However, the variability found in American English points to the prosodic patterns of English and the variability found in Brazilian English points to the stress patterns of Portuguese. It occurs especially in words whose forms activate neighboring similar words in the L1. Transfer from the L1 appears both at segmental and prosodic levels in BP English. [1] L2 stands for second language, foreign language, target language. [2] L1 stands for first language, mother tongue, source language.

Towards a characterisation of saliency on first exposure to a second language

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 131-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebekah Rast ◽  
Jean-Yves Dommergues
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Length ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Slavic Language ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
Sentence Repetition ◽  
First Contact ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Repetition Task ◽  
Over Time

This paper attempts to shed light on the question of what in the input is perceived and processed by the learner, and how it is processed upon first contact with a target language. Subjects were French learners of Polish who had had no contact with Polish or any other Slavic language before the onset of the project. They were tested on a sentence repetition task before receiving any Polish instruction, after 4 hours of instruction, and again after 8 hours. The results suggest that even as little as 8 hours of exposure induces a recognizable interlanguage; that the influence of global input can be predicted by word length, word stress, phonemic distance, transparency, position and frequency; and that the role these factors play evolves over time. Together the results suggest a way to characterise the notion of saliency in the input.

Speeded discrimination of American English vowel contrasts by Spanish‐speaking late second‐language (L2) learners.

2009 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 2764-2764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Rosas ◽  
Arsenia Barias ◽  
Yana D. Gilichinskaya ◽  
Winifred Strange
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
American English ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
L2 Learners

scholarly journals Gradual development of L2 phrase structure

1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Vainikka ◽  
Martha Young-Scholten
Keyword(s):  
Phrase Structure ◽  
Spanish Speakers ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Initial State ◽  
Final Value ◽  
Spanish Speaking ◽  
Formal Instruction ◽  
Gradual Development ◽  
Verb Raising

We begin by reviewing data from Korean, Turkish, Italian and Spanish-speaking adults acquiring German without formal instruction. Our findings have shown that these learners transfer their L1 VPs: the Korean and Turkish speakers transfer a head-final VP and the Italian and Spanish speakers first transfer a head-initial VP and then switch its headedness to the correct, head-final value for German. Although functional projections in Korean and Turkish are head-final and in Italian and Spanish head-initial, all four groups of learners subsequently posit head-initial functional projections in German (which are not always target-like). We conclude that only lexical projections constitute the L2 learner's initial state; the development of functional projections is driven solely by the interaction of X'-Theory with the target-language input. We then discuss some studies on the acquisition of French by English speakers and of English by speakers of various L1s which purport to bring evidence to bear against our approach. Upon closer examination, the evidence turns out to offer further support for the position that the sole projections which the learner transfers from the L1 are lexical ones. Finally, we account for potentially problematic verb-raising data from French learners of English. Rather than taking the stance that French raising to Agr is transferred, we propose that L2 learners' identification of free morphemes as salient triggers leads to a misanalysis of verb raising in English. We also apply this idea to a reanalysis of the morpheme-order studies of the 1970s.

Sentence interpretation in bilingual speakers of English and Dutch

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet L. Mcdonald
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Native Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Learning Pattern ◽  
Bilingual Speakers ◽  
Language Exposure

ABSTRACTSpeakers of English and Dutch vary in how strongly they use various syntactic (e.g., word order, prepositions, case inflection) and semantic (e.g., noun animacy) cues to interpret native language sentences. For example, in simple NVN sentences, English speakers rely heavily on word order, while Dutch speakers rely on case inflection. This paper compares the cue usage of English/Dutch and Dutch/English bilinguals with varying amounts of second language exposure to that of native speaker control groups. For all constructions tested, dative constructions, simple NVN sentences, and relative clauses, it was found that with increasing exposure, cue usage in the second language gradually shifts from that appropriate to the first language to that appropriate to the second. A model of cue learning originally proposed to account for monolingual data is found to be compatible with the learning pattern exhibited by bilinguals.

Age of Second-Language Acquisition and Perception of Speech in Noise

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 686-693 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Hansberry Mayo ◽  
Mary Florentine ◽  
Søren Buus
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
American English ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Mexican Spanish ◽  
Speech Perception In Noise ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
High Level ◽  
American English Speakers ◽  
Late Bilinguals

To determine how age of acquisition influences perception of second-language speech, the Speech Perception in Noise (SPIN) test was administered to native Mexican-Spanish-speaking listeners who learned fluent English before age 6 (early bilinguals) or after age 14 (late bilinguals) and monolingual American-English speakers (monolinguals). Results show that the levels of noise at which the speech was intelligible were significantly higher and the benefit from context was significantly greater for monolinguals and early bilinguals than for late bilinguals. These findings indicate that learning a second language at an early age is important for the acquisition of efficient high-level processing of it, at least in the presence of noise.

SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AND PAUSING A Study of Russian Speakers of English

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Riazantseva
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Standardized Test ◽  
English Proficiency ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
Pause Duration ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
L2 Proficiency ◽  
Russian Speakers

The present study examines the relationship between second language (L2) proficiency and pausing patterns (i.e., pause duration, frequency, and distribution) in the speech of 30 Russian speakers of English performing two oral tasks—a topic narrative and a cartoon description—in Russian and in English. The subjects were divided into two oral English proficiency groups, high and intermediate, on the basis of a standardized test of spoken English. Baseline data were collected from a control group of 20 native English speakers. Statistical analyses were performed to determine: (a) the native norms of pause duration, frequency, and distribution for Russian and English on the two experimental tasks; (b) the effect of the level of L2 proficiency (high and intermediate) on the pausing of Russian speakers in English; and (c) the differences or similarities in pausing exhibited by native English speakers and native Russian speakers (with two different levels of English proficiency) when speaking English. The results of this study indicate that English and Russian informal monologue speech can be characterized as having different pausing conventions, thus suggesting that crosslinguistic differences involve, among many other aspects, contrasts in pausing patterns. Additionally, L2 proficiency was found to affect the pause duration of advanced nonnative speakers in that they were able to adjust the duration of their pauses in English to produce a nativelike pausing norm. It was also found that even highly proficient L2 speakers pause more frequently in their L2 than in their first language (L1). The examination of pause distribution patterns suggests that persons of intermediate to high L2 speaking proficiency make the same number of within-constituent pauses as native speakers. Overall, the findings of this study support the view that adherence to the target language pausing norms may lead to the perception of nonnative speech as more fluent and nativelike. The findings also highlight the importance of exposing L2 students to a richer variety of situations that illustrate native patterns of verbal communication.

scholarly journals Understanding the Process of Second Language Acquisition

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 29
Author(s):  
Yixu Ding
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Target Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Chinese Speakers ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Regional Language

As the world is becoming more and more connected, the education system needs to provide each learner with an equal opportunity for success. Measures should put in place to ensure that obtaining an education is made possible for all students, including foreign students, such as English speakers in China and Chinese speakers in the United Kingdom. The biggest obstacle to making this dream a reality is that very few educators are sufficiently equipped to understand the foundational knowledge with regards to teaching learners of speaking a different language from the regional language, raising the need for target language acquisition. This paper will look into the Acculturation model of second language acquisition and Stephen Krashen's theory of second language acquisition. Since educators are increasingly being forced to teach students speaking foreign languages understanding second language acquisition is very important. Understanding the process of second language acquisition may be important to educators and enable students in second language acquisition.

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