Abstract
When someone who is learning a second language (L2) produces a sound
in the L2 using a familiar, native-language (L1) category, the L2
sound is said to have been "identified with" an L1 sound. Although
interlingual identification exerts a powerful influence on L2 pronunciation,
it is still poorly understood. Orthographic classification was used
here to assess the interlingual identification of Spanish and English
vowels. Sixty native speakers of Spanish in three experiments judged
the vowels /i/, /I/, /e/, and /ae/ in multiple tokens of English
words ("beat", "bit", "bet", "bat") spoken by ten native speakers
of American English. The subjects labelled each English vowel by
circling one of the five letters used to spell the vowel phonemes
of Spanish (viz. less than i greater than, less than e greater than,
less than a greater than, less than o greater than, less than u greater
than) or by circling "none" if they thought they had heard a vowel
not found in Spanish. Subjects who spoke English as an L2 used the
"none" label more often than did Spanish monolinguals, suggesting
that L2 learning heightens bilinguals' awareness of cross-language
phonetic differences. Experienced Spanish speakers of English did
use the "none" label more often than did inexperienced subjects (42\%
vs. 18\%). A few subjects used the "none" label consistently for
/ae/ and /I/, suggesting that they may have regarded these vowels
as "new" (i.e., non-Spanish). However, the group data provided little
support for the hypothesis that the adult Spanish learners of English
treated either /ae/ or /I/ as new. The great majority of subjects,
even those highly experienced in English, identified English /ae/
with their Spanish /a/.
- adult,attention,english,female,humans,language,male,phonetics,psychoacoustics,psycholinguistics,spanish,speech
- perception,language,vowels
Users
Please
log in to take part in the discussion (add own reviews or comments).