Second Language Phonology 1

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Second Language Phonology 1

• Thu Nguyen
• Linguistics Program
• School of E.M.S.A.H.
• University of Queensland

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Basic questions

• Children acquire the sound system of their native
  language (L1) fully and naturally, while most
  adults have difficulties acquiring the sound
  system of a foreign language (L2).
• What causes differences between L1 / L2
  acquisition of phonology? Age? Input? L1/L2
  conflicts? Motivation?
• Are perception and production equally hampered in
  L2 acquisition?
• Are L1 / L2 phonologies separate systems or
  merged?

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Background needed to tackle these problems

• Insights into first versus second language
  acquisition (acquisition theory)
• Insights into the sound systems of the L1, L2 and
  universal languages (UG) (phonology phonetics)
• Insights into the human speech perception and
  production system (psychology)

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1. Insights from Acquisition Theory

• General observations about L2 acquisition (vs.
  L1)
• - Incomplete attainment (fossilization) for most
  learners, suggesting a role of age factors.
• - Non-age-related differences already
  possessing an L1, being socialized in L1
  community, personal differences.

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1.1. Factors affect degree of L2 foreign accent

• Age-of-learner biological age Critical Period?
• Age-of-arrival age at which learner entered a
  community in which L2 is the predominant
  language. Full attainment seldom after 12 years.
  Major factor.
• Length-of-residence number of years spent in a
  community in which L2 is the predominant
  language an estimate of the amount of exposure
  to L2
• L1 background Including transfer of L1 properties

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1.1. Factors (continued)

• Formal instruction Number of years of
  instruction in L2, Fairly weak predictor of
  degree of foreign accent.
• Motivation Importance to the learner membership
  of social group, professional standards, etc.
  Self-ratings of importance of good L2
  pronunciation for work or social life, but
  difficult to quantify exactly
• Language learning aptitude An individual
  learners potential for learning a second language

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1.2. What explains the effect of age on L2
learning?

• Critical Period Hypothesis
• - Complete mastery of an L2 is no longer
  possible if learning begins after the end of the
  putative CP.
• - Putative CP ends somewhere between the ages of
  6 and 12 years.
• - CP effects have usually been attributed to an
  age-related loss of neural plasticity or to some
  sort of neurofunctional reorganization that
  occurs during development. In the brain, language
  functions are lateralized to the left hemisphere.

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1.2. What explains (continued)

• Competition between L1 and L2
• - Age is an index of the state of development of
  the L1 system the more developed the L1 system
  is when L2 learning commences, the more strongly
  the L1 will influence the L2.
• - Age-related changes in degree of foreign
  accent result from the nature and extent of
  interaction between a bilingual's L1 and L2
  systems.

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1.3. Dimensions of L2 acquisition models

• Interlanguage Continuum ? Transfer of L1, ?
  Access to UG
• Interlanguage refers to the separateness of a
  second language learners system, a system that
  has a structurally intermediate status between
  the native and target languages. (Brown, 2000,
  p. 215)
• -Restructuring Continuum NL.TL
• -Re-creation Continuum UGTL
• -Compound Continuum NL/UG..TL

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Where could UG come into play?

• Three different views
• - UG is non-existent. (Emergentist position)
• - UG guides L1 acquisition, but not L2
  acquisition. (No-Access-to-UG)
• - UG guides both L1 and L2 acquisition.
  (Full-Access-to-UG)

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What is in UG? Again, there are radically
different views

• Phonological primitives (e.g. set of distinctive
  features, a universal feature geometry (/p/ vs.
  /b/ differ in voice, /p/ vs. /f/
  continuant, sonority hierarchy)
• Universal markedness (missing or infrequent
  features (e.g., active use of ATR is marked)
• Any mixture of the above

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1.4. L2 Phonology The Logical Problem

• What is required for acquiring the sound system
  of a second language?
• A Full-Transfer, Full-Access scenario
• At start
• - A phonology of the first language (including a
  set of categories,e.g., a vowel inventory)
• - Transfer onto the initial state of the
  learners second language (copy L1 onto L2)
• - Input exposure to acoustic forms of the
  target language

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- Development

• A learning algorithm, which adjusts L2s initial
  state due to exposure to input forms,
• - resulting in a set of interlanguages
• ILinitial ? ILi1 ? ILi2
• - terminating into an L2 final state
• ILin ? ILfinal
• Which properties of L1 phonology are subject to
  transfer?
• - L1s set of categories (vowels, consonants,)
• - L1 perception boundaries between L1
  categories and their exact position in perceptual
  space.
• - L1 production the rules for phonetic
  realization of L1 categories.

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2. Insights from Phonology and Phonetics

• Mastering the phonology of a language involved
• individual segments (consonants, vowels)
• combination of segments which produce syllables
  (CV, CVC)
• prosody (stress, rhythm, tone, intonation)
• global accent or the overall accent of a speaker

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2.1 Segment

• Learners need to master
• the individual characteristics of sounds
  consonants and vowels( e.g., point and manner of
  articulation of /t/ tongue tip touching the
  alveolar ridge, voiceless)
• the allophonic processes or the rules of how
  sounds change in different contexts (/t/ in ten
  is aspirated but unaspirated in stew)

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Segment Areas of transfer

• Sound substitution an L2 learner uses the
  nearest equivalent in the L1 Vietnamese /b, d/
  for English /b, d/ e.g., in bed, dad
• Phonological processes allophonic processes are
  also transferred devoicing of final obstruents
• Underdifferentiation L2 has distinctions that
  the L1 does not a French speaker using /i/ for
  English / i/ and /I/

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Segment Areas of transfer

• Overdifferentiation L1 has distinctions that L2
  does not /p/ and /p?/ in Khmer are separate
  phonemes, e.g., pan
• Reinterpretation of distinctions some features
  are considered primary, therefore distinctive,
  with others secondary or redundant. English
  beet vs. bit
• tense/lax primary, length is
  redundant
• German bieten (offer) vs.bitten (ask).
• length primary.
• A German speaker of English may interprete the
  primary difference between beet and bit is length
  rather than vowel quality.

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2.2 Syllables

• Syllable structure Onset, rhyme, nuclear, Coda
• Phonotactics deals with the syllable structures
  in a language (different possible combinations of
  consonants, vowels, and glides in a syllable)
  CV, CVC, CCVCC
• Phonotactic interference L2 learners typically
  modify syllable structures to fit their L1
  structures. Loan words a rudimentary form of L2
  acquisition
• Japanese syllable structure (CV) vowel
  epenthesis
• McDonalds makudonarodo
• Big Mac bigumaku
• Vietnamese lexical tone on each syllable
• Australia -gt ?x-trây-li-a (high rising-
  level- level-level)
• Doctor -gt d?c t? (high rising-low falling)
• Nguyen(2003) Vietnamese perception of
  English stress

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2.3. Prosody (stress, tone, intonation, rhythm
and timing)

• Stress and Tones
• Stress is the perceived prominence. Correlates of
  stress vowel duration, pitch, loudness and/or
  vowel quality
• Fixed stress languages (French last syllable,
  Czech and Hungarian first syllable), movable
  stressed languages (English), pitch accent
  language (Japanese), tone languages (Vietnamese,
  Chinese)

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Stress and Tones Areas of transfer

• Phonological stress patterns (e.g., stress
  assignment problem vs. problem French speaker
  stressing the last syllable in English words)
  attend vs. attend
• Between tones and stress (e.g., American
  learners having problems realising Chinese or
  Vietnamese tones (use the wrong tone in Chinese
  and refer to his or her horse instead of
  mother)
• Phonetic acoustic quality
• (e.g., present n vs. present v)
• transfer of pitch, lack of duration and vowel
  quality contrast (Japanese Ueyama, 2000
  Vietnamese Nguyen and Ingram, 2005 )

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Intonation

• The changing patterns of pitch that signal
  syntactic, discourse, and semantic differences
  (English yes, no question, tag question,
  surprise, a command)
• Vietnamese learners fail to deaccent the nouns
  in narrow focus phrase and compound patterns
  (Nguyen, 2003)
• blúe bóttle broad focus phrase, meaning a
  bottle that is blue
• blúe bottle narrow focus phrase, contrastive to
  green bottle)
• blúebottle compound, meaning a kind of jelly
  fish

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Rhythm and Timing

• Languages are traditionally classified into three
  basic rhythmic types
• Stress-timed languages English, Brazillian
  Portuguese stressed syllables much longer than
  unstressed syllables and equal beats between
  major stress group
• 1. Rob speaks English.
• 2. Robin speaks English
• 3. Robinson speaks English
• 4. Robinson can speak English
• 5. Pete sang songs.
• 6. Peter sang the songs.
• 7. Peterson sang us the songs
• Syllable-timed languages Vietnamese, Spanish
  syllables roughly of equal length.
• Mora-timed languages Japanese moraes of equal
  length

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Examples of rhythmic and timing transfer

• Japanese (Mochizuki-Sudo Kiritani 1991) lack
  of foot-level shortening, larger increment in the
  interstress interval durations as more syllables
  are added
• Vietnamese (Nguyen 2003) lack of compression of
  stressed syllable in polysyllabic words or
  stressed feet, lack of reduction of weak
  syllables, and inappropriate pausing patterns at
  word boundaries