The production of “new” and “similar” phones in a foreign language: evidence for the effect of equivalence classification

Abstract

Acoustic measurements were made of the voice onset time (VOT) and vowel formants (F 1 –F 3 ) in French and English words spoken by native French subjects who were highly experienced in English, and by three groups of native English subjects differing according to French-language experience. The speech of monolingual subjects was also examined to estimate the phonetic norms of French and English. It was hypothesized that equivalence classification limits the extent to which L2 learners approximate L2 phonetic norms for “similar” L2 phones judged to be realizations of a category in L1 (e.g. /u/ and /t/ of French and English), but not a “new” L2 phone which has no counterpart in L1 (French /y/ for the native English subjects). Native English subjects who were experienced in French did not differ from French monolinguals in producing French /y/. However, the subjects in all four groups produced /u/ in their L2 with F 2 values which differed significantly from those of native speakers; and they all produced /t/ in their L2 with mean VOT values that either closely resembled the L1 phonetic norm, or were intermediate to the phonetic norm for VOT in L1 and L2. L2 learning was also shown to influence production of /t/ in L1. The native French subjects who spoke English produced French /t/ with longer (i.e., English-like) VOT values than French monolinguals; and the most experienced native English speakers of French produced English /t/ with shorter (French-like) VOT values than English monolinguals. Taken together, these results suggest that the phonetic space of adults is restructured during L2 learning, and support the hypothesis that equivalence classification prevents experienced L2 learners from producing similar L2 phones, but not new L2 phones, authentically.