The acquisition of L2 phonetic categories: Single-, two-, and multiple-category assimilation in Dutch learners of Spanish

Abstract

The perceptual acquisition of Spanish vowel categories by Dutch speakers is examined. One might think that these learners have few problems because Dutch has as many as 12 monophthongs in its vowel inventory, and Spanish has only 5. However, a perception experiment shows that Dutch learners make quite a few mistakes when identifying Spanish vowels. It was predicted that these errors exemplify three well-attested patterns in the initial state of L2 acquisition: single-, two-, and multiple-category assimilation. These patterns may be found in the categorization of Spanish /i/–/e/, /e/–/a/, and /u/–/o/, respectively. The strategies that the learners follow to solve the problems associated with these patterns are presented, as well as the development of phonetic categorization in the three scenarios. Ninety-six listeners were tested with a three-way experiment design. The stimuli were Spanish CVCs embedded in Dutch or Spanish carrier sentences. The first two experiments were designed to find out to what degree learners perceive L2 sounds differently from L1 sounds. The third experiment tested the development of the learners’ L2 categorization accuracy. The combined results of the three experiments show that the learners indeed manifest the three different assimilation patterns, each of which is solved by a different strategy.