Perceiving allophonic alternations in an immersion setting: The case of alveolars and rhotics in Spanish and English

Abstract

Recent research indicates that second language (L2) immersion influences the phonetic production not only of the L2 (Jacobs, Fricke, & Kroll, 2016), but also of the first language (L1) (Chang, 2012). However, less understood is the immediate impact of L2 immersion on cross-language influence in phonetic perception. This study tracked L2 Spanish study abroad learners’ perceptual shifts due to immersion using auditory-visual cross-modal priming experiments in both Spanish and English. The target phones, [r, ɾ, t, d, ð, ɹ], were chosen for their differing phonemic and allophonic statuses in Spanish and English. For example, Spanish rhotics include the phonemic trilled /r/ and tapped /ɾ/, whereas the tapped /ɾ/ exists phonetically in English, but as an allophone of the alveolar stops /t d/. Because learners must adjust their phonological inventories to accommodate the L2 statuses of these phones, we expect their L1 inventories to also reflect these changes, as evidenced by slower RTs for the prime-target pairs that do not correspond to the L2. This study provides a fuller perspective on how immersion mediates L1-L2 interference, and offers insight as to whether perceptual changes in the two languages are necessarily related. Data analyses are currently underway.