Relative difficulty in the L2 acquisition of the Spanish dorsal fricative

Matthew Patience

doi:10.22599/jesla.48

Abstract

Research on relative difficulty in L2 production has revealed that learners target the most salient parameter when acquiring new sounds (Colantoni & Steele, 2008). For example, L1 English-L2 French learners acquire the more salient fricative manner of the French /ʁ/ before the voicing and duration parameters (Colantoni & Steele, 2007, 2008). Previous work in this framework has not compared the acquisition of place and manner parameters. If the more salient parameter is targeted first, we should expect L2 learners to acquire the manner of articulation before the place of articulation, given that manner is a more salient feature than place (Miller & Nicely, 1955; Bedoin et al., 2013). This hypothesis was tested by investigating the L2 production of the Spanish voiceless dorsal fricative by L1 English speakers living in Madrid, a region in which the fricative has a strident realization (Hualde, 2014) and a uvular place of articulation (Ibabe et al., 2016). Fourteen L1 English-L2 Spanish speakers and 14 native Spanish controls performed a picture description task that elicited the target in two vocalic contexts: [aχe, eχa]. An acoustic analysis revealed that the L2 speakers produced fricatives with a similar amplitude compared to controls. However, in the [eχa] context, the learners produced fricatives with a more anterior place of articulation and less frication. The results are consistent with the finding from previous work that learners focus on the most salient property when learning new segments, and provide further evidence that vocalic context is an important factor in production difficulty.

Highlights

One of the primary goals in research on the acquisition of non-native sounds is to determine sources of difficulty
Research on relative difficulty is important in the field of L2 speech, because it has been demonstrated that current theories of L2 acquisition are often unable to predict and/or explain the sources of difficulty in L2 production
The difference between groups in the e_a context approached significant (β = −13.860, SE = 7.231, t = −1.917, p = .056). These results indicate that the language*context interaction was primarily driven by a lower kurtosis value in the control compared to L2 speakers, in the e_a speaker groups in two vocalic contexts

Summary

Introduction

One of the primary goals in research on the acquisition of non-native sounds is to determine sources of difficulty. Previous work has found that the individual parameters are acquired in some phonetic contexts (e.g., intervocalic) before others, and that neighboring vowels can hinder or facilitate acquisition (Yavas, 1997; Waltmunson, 2005). Research on relative difficulty is important in the field of L2 speech, because it has been demonstrated that current theories of L2 acquisition are often unable to predict and/or explain the sources of difficulty in L2 production. Existing theories cannot account for the successive acquisition of parameters and/or they cannot account for difficulty that arises due to phonetic context or neighboring segments (see Colantoni & Steele, 2008 for discussion). The Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman, 1977, 2008) predicts that segments

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