Discrimination of L2 Greek vowel contrasts: Evidence from learners with Arabic L1 background

Abstract

The present study investigates the assimilation of the Cypriot Greek (CGR) vowels to the phonological categories of Egyptian Arabic (EA) as well as the discrimination of 2 stressed and 2 unstressed Cypriot Greek vowel contrasts by native speakers of Egyptian Arabic. It also intends to test the discriminability of the assimilation types according to the predictions of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM). 15 adult female immigrants, who permanently live in Cyprus for 4–5 years and were taught Greek in formal educational settings, completed a task for the assimilation of the second language (L2) vowels to the phonological space of their native language; followed by an AXB test for the detection of the discrimination accuracy over second language vowel contrasts. The discrimination scores of the second language learners were compared with the ones of the native speakers of Cypriot Greek, who constituted the control group. The results indicated a Category Goodness (CG) difference assimilation type for 3 of the vowel contrasts (stressed /i/-/e/, stressed /o/-/u/ and unstressed /o/-/u/) and a Two Category (TC) assimilation for one of the contrasts (unstressed /i/-/e/) as a consequence of the effect of their native language. A moderate discrimination for the contrasts which reported a Category Goodness difference assimilation type was observed while the Two Category assimilation type reported an excellent discrimination by the second language learners. The results agree with the Perceptual Assimilation Model's assumptions about the predictions of the aforementioned assimilation types, also showing a success of the model in the prediction of the perception patterns of experienced second language learners. Finally, the role of stress on the perception of second language contrasts was important since the stressed contrast /i/-/e/ was discriminated in a different manner in comparison to the corresponding unstressed one.