Effects of first language voicing rules on the perception and production of English obstruent sequences by adult Hungarian and Polish learners of English
Item
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Title
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Effects of first language voicing rules on the perception and production of English obstruent sequences by adult Hungarian and Polish learners of English
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:55c5d0f81db6:10205
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identifier
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10388
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Creator
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Monteleone, Marisa A.,
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Contributor
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Winifred Strange
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Date
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2009
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Linguistics | Communication | English as a second language | Bilingual education | Hungarian | Polish | regressive voicing assimilation | second language acquisition | speech perception
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Abstract
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The present study explored difficulties in the acquisition of a second language (L2) phonology, looking specifically at the role of native (L1) voicing rules on L2 perception and production. Hungarian and Polish late learners of English performed production and perception tasks with English voicing contrasts in contexts where Hungarian and Polish voicing rules might interfere. American English speakers also participated, for comparison. Each participant produced sentences containing fictional names with obstruent sequences crossing a word boundary (e.g. I met Gus Barker today). The nonnative participants did show evidence of transfer of their native regressive voicing assimilation rules to their productions of English word-final obstruents, although regressive devoicing was observed more often than regressive voicing. Each participant also performed identification tasks with similar sentences (e.g. I met Je ss Geller today): a four-choice task containing the entire obstruent sequence, and a two-choice task containing sentences in which either the first or last name had been replaced with silence (e.g. I met Jess [silence] today or I met [silence] Geller today). For word-final obstruents, the non-native listeners were significantly less accurate in the two-choice task than the American English controls, but not significantly different from each other. In the four-choice task, both groups became even less accurate, with the Polish listeners showing a more severe effect than the Hungarian listeners. Overall, there was a slight significant correlation of word-final perception and production scores. For word-initial stops, perception was highly accurate for all groups, with the exception of voiced stops in a voiceless-voiced context. Perception of word-initial /s/ was unexpectedly poor for all three language groups. The pattern of results observed in this study suggests that both L1 phonetic and phonological interference affects perception and production in an L2. Implications for current theoretical models of second language phonology are discussed.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Linguistics
