Voicing and manner of articulation in L2 perception: The role of markedness

Abstract

Arabic labial obstruents exhibit gaps in voicing: both the voiceless stop /p/ and the voiced fricative /v/ are absent. Thus, Arabic speakers learning English must acquire the missing labial segments along with segments that are already in their phonemic inventory. In this study, I examine markedness in L2 acquisition of English by Arabic speakers, focusing on its role in perception. Specifically, I test two general markedness patterns: (a) stops are unmarked relative to fricatives and (b) voicing contrast in word-initial position is unmarked relative to word-final position. If unmarked sounds are easier to acquire than marked ones, we may expect Arabic speakers to perceive the new segment /p/ better than /v/. Moreover, their perception of the voicing contrast in word-initial position should be better than in word-final position. 31 Saudi Arabic speakers heard 144 nonce words produced by a native speaker of English. The words included: /p/, /b/, /f/ and /v/ in word-initial or word-final position. Results showed Arabic speakers were significantly better at perceiving the fricative /v/ than the stop /p/ (p < .01), contrary to what was expected, suggesting that the acoustic cues of fricatives are perceptually more prominent. The markedness relation was, however, observed with better perception word-initially than word-finally.