Accuracy in producing and perceiving vowels in a second language (L2)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to assess the effect on L2 performance of native Italian subjects’ age of arrival (AOA) in Canada and their percentage use (% USE) of Italian. The 72 native Italian subjects examined had lived in Canada for 36 years, on average. They repeated auditorily modeled English words containing 1 of 11 vowels, then inserted each vowel into a nonword (/b\_m_do/) context. Analyses of listeners’ goodness ratings revealed that subjects with AOAs greater than 10 years produced vowels less accurately than did native English controls. These same subjects produced four English vowels that are not found in Italian (/■ æ ■ ■/) even less accurately in nonwords than in words. This suggested that the ability to establish categories for ‘‘new’’ L2 vowels is age-limited. AOA and % USE were also found to influence the native Italian subjects’ performance on an oddity-format categorial discrimination test which examined contrasts between English vowels (e.g., /■/–/i/) or English versus Italian vowels (e.g., /æ/–/a/). Production and perception accuracy were found to correlate significantly. Taken together, the results support the view that L2 vowel production accuracy is limited by the ability to establish new categories perceptually which, in turn, is age-limited. [Work supported by NIH.]