Abstract
The degree of similarity between the sounds of a speaker’s first and second language (L1 and L2) is believed to determine the likelihood of accurate perception and production of the L2 sounds. This paper explores the relationship between cross-linguistic similarity and the perception and production of a subset of English vowels, including the highly productive /iː/-/ɪ/ contrast (as in “beat” vs. “bit”), by a group of Spanish/Catalan native speakers learning English as an L2. The learners’ ability to identify, discriminate and produce the English vowels accurately was contrasted with their cross-linguistic perceived similarity judgements. The results showed that L2 perception and production accuracy was not always predicted from patterns of cross-language similarity, particularly regarding the difficulty distinguishing /iː/ and /ɪ/. Possible explanations may involve the way the L2 /iː/ and /ɪ/ categories interact, the effect of non-native acoustic cue reliance, and the roles of orthography and language instruction.
Highlights
Learning a second or foreign language (L2) after childhood is a difficult task for a variety of reasons
Following Guion et al (2000), a fit index score (FI) was calculated by multiplying the identification proportion by the goodness of fit rating. This composite score is meant to distinguish between cases of comparable assimilation percentages that differ in goodness of fit ratings (GR), and was used by Guion et al (2000) to determine the likelihood of accurate discrimination for pairs of L2 vowels
The current results are on the whole in agreement with the previous studies showing that Spanish speakers consistently assimilate English /i/ and /ε/ to Spanish /i/ and /e/, and that English /ɪ/ displays a less consistent pattern (Escudero and Chládková, 2010; Morrison, 2012; Baigorri et al, 2019; Cebrian, 2019, see Table 1 above)
Summary
Learning a second or foreign language (L2) after childhood is a difficult task for a variety of reasons. Variability in L2 performance has been linked to the degree of similarity between first and second language sound systems (Lado, 1957; Best, 1995; Flege, 1995; Kuhl and Iverson, 1995, among others). Models of L2 speech relate the likelihood of accurate perception and production of target language phones to the degree of similarity between L1 and L2 phones. Models of L2 speech, such as the contrastive analysis hypothesis (Lado, 1957), suggested that the closer a target language phone was to a L1 category, the easier it was to perceive and produce it accurately. Escudero’s (2005) Second Language Linguistic Perception Model (L2LP) posits that L2 phones that have a similar L1 counterpart are easier to learn than new phones with no clear counterpart in the L1. Best and colleagues’ Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM, Best, 1995), and its adaptation to L2 speech learning PAM-L2 (Best and Tyler, 2007), propose that L2 learners’ ability to perceive L2
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