Persistent errors in the perception and production of word-initial English stop consonants by native speakers of Italian

Abstract

This study examined the perception and production of word-initial tokens of English stops (/b d g/ and /p t k/) by native speakers of Italian. The native Italian subjects were assigned to one of four groups based on their age of arrival (AOA) to Canada from Italy and percentage of self-reported use of the native language, Italian. The results obtained here suggested that AOA was a more important predictor of the native Italian subjects’ perception and production of word-initial English stops than L1 use was. The results also provided evidence of native versus non-native differences in segmental perception and production that persisted after decades of frequent second-language use. As hypothesized, the native Italian subjects produced English /p t k/ more accurately than /b d g/. In a perception experiment examining naturally produced English stops, the native Italian subjects misidentified short-lag tokens of English /b d g/ as /p t k/ more often than they misidentified long-lag /p t k/ tokens as /b d g/. Late bilinguals erred more often in identifying the voicing feature in /b d g/ than did early Italian–English bilinguals or native speakers of English, apparently because Italian /p t k/ are realized with short-lag VOT values.