Cross‐linguistic perception of the epenthetic vowel in obstruent + liquid clusters in Spanish.

Abstract

This research explores the perception of the epenthetic vowel (EV) that occurs in the obstruent + liquid clusters in Spanish. The perceptibility of EV and its effect in the cluster is analyzed in Spanish native speakers and English native speakers learning Spanish at different levels: beginners; intermediate; and advanced. For this study, two tests were used: a perceptual identification test and a discrimination test (AXB protocol). The study explores the effect of linguistic and prosodic variables such as place and manner of articulation, voicing, type of liquid, and stress. The statistical analysis was conducted using mixed logit models, which can better account for subject and item random effects. This procedure, in contrast to other analyses, builds a model that predicts the effect of each factor. The results show that the different groups use different cues. For English speakers, place, voicing, and stress are predictors for the beginner and intermediate group (WaldZ = 0.000p < 0.000) whereas only voicing is a predictor for the advanced group (WaldZ = 0.008p < 0.01). For the Spanish native speakers voicing and stress are predictors (WaldZ = 0.02p < 0.05). The results suggest that perceptual cues vary according to L1 and proficiency level.