The Acquisition of L2 Length Contrasts

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The Acquisition of L2 Length Contrasts

• Jen Mah John Archibald
• University of Calgary
• GASLA, 2002

2
Acknowledgements

• Funded by SSHRCC

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Can new structure be acquired?

• Segments
• Syllable structure
• Stress
• Tone

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Background

• Brown (2000) argues that it is not the individual
  phonemes of the L1 and L2 that present the
  learner with difficulty, but rather it is the
  features present in the L1 grammar of the learner
  that influence the perception and acquisition of
  L2 phonology.

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• If the L1 has the relevant feature then the
  feature can be re-deployed to acquire a new L2
  contrast

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• Brown looked at the acquisition of l by Chinese
  and Japanese speakers
• Chinese speakers had the feature CORONAL
  elsewhere in their inventory and could use it to
  acquire l
• Japanese speakers do not have CORONAL and did
  not acquire l

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Other Studies

• English learners acquiring Czech palatal stops
• Finnish speakers acquiring English consonant
  clusters
• English speakers acquiring Mandarin tones

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Japanese Length

• Japanese has length contrasts in both the
  consonantal and vocalic inventories
• t vs. tt
• ? vs. ?

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Our Research Question

• Can English speakers acquire length contrasts in
  a second language?

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Hypothesis A

• Native speakers of English will be unable to
  acquire Japanese geminate and single consonant
  contrasts because English does not contrast
  consonant length
• They will acquire Japanese short and long vowel
  contrasts, since the feature for vowel length is
  present in the L1 grammar. English has monomoraic
  and bimoraic vowels

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Hypothesis B

• English speakers will be able to acquire both
  long consonants and vowels because their L1
  maintains a length contrast.

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Discussion

• Han (1992) provides empirical evidence of
  difficulty in dealing with geminate and single
  stop contrasts
• Native English speakers often fail to produce the
  appropriate contrasts, and
• When they succeed in doing so, the timing of the
  geminate stop closure differs significantly from
  that of a native speaker.

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Present Study

• The present study seeks to answer the question
• Can English speakers acquire Japanese length
  contrasts?

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Data Collection and Analysis

• Data was collected at two time intervals.
• Measurements of consonant and vowel duration were
  taken to examine the subjects timing control.
• Mean ratios were compared against those produced
  by native speakers of Japanese.

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• Measurements of vowel formants (F1 and F2) were
  taken to examine the subjects accuracy in
  producing Japanese vowels.
• These were compared against measurements of the
  subjects English vowels to determine the amount
  of L1 vowel substitution.

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• Fifteen Japanese sentences designed to elicit the
  targeted contrasts.
• The sentences were written in hiragana script.
• The subject read each sentence three times
• The data were re-digitized at a sampling rate of
  22.2 kHz using Soundscope 8. Wide-band
  spectrograms were made of the relevant sentences,
  and measurements were taken from these.

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Ratio of Long to Short Consonants
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Ratio of Long to Short Vowels
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/t/ vs. /tt/ /p/ vs. /pp/
/k/ vs. /kk/ /?/ vs. /??/
/n/ vs. /nn/ /m/ vs. /mm/
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/t/ /tt/ /p/ /pp/
/k/ /kk/ /?/ /??/
/n/ /nn/ /m/ /mm/
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/a/ vs. /a/ /i/ vs. /i/
/?/ vs. /?/ /?/ vs. /?/ /?/ vs.
/?/
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/a/ /a/ /i/ /i/
/?/ /?/ /?/ /?/
/?/ /?/
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/a/ /a/ /i/ /i/ /?/ /?/ /?/ /?/ /?/ /?/
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/a/ /?/ /a/ /?/ /i/ /?/ /i/ /ij/ /?/ /?/ /?/ /u
w/ /?/ (Jpns) /?/ (Engl) /?/ /ej/ /?/ (Jpns) /?/
(Engl) /?/ /ow/ ?
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Summary of T1 Data

• The subject consistently produces geminate
  consonants that are significantly longer than the
  corresponding single consonants.
• The subject consistently produces long vowels
  that are significantly longer than the
  corresponding short vowels.
• Both types of length contrast exhibit some
  troubling variation in the tokens produced, the
  vowels to a greater extent than the consonants.

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• The subject has acquired a length contrast she
  consistently produced long consonants and long
  vowels that were significantly longer than their
  short counterparts.
• The subject does not, however, have native-like
  control of the timing of the Japanese length
  contrasts. Not only is there variation among the
  segment classes, there is variation among the
  tokens of one phoneme.

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• The subject did not substitute English vowels for
  the target Japanese vowels all vowels were found
  to be produced with a significantly different
  vowel quality than the English counterpart.
• The subject did, however, show evidence of L1
  interference in that her Japanese long vowels
  were produced with a significantly different
  vowel quality than the corresponding short vowels.

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From Time I to Time II

• The changes from Time I to Time II suggest that
  the subject was not able to make use of any
  knowledge gained from the results of Time I.
• The timing control of most length contrasts did
  not change significantly where it did, it did
  not result in a great improvement to the mean
  ratio.
• Vowel quality did not change significantly for
  most vowels where it did, it did not result in a
  more native-like vowel.

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T2 Vowel Length
/a/ vs. /a/ /i/ vs. /i/
/?/ vs. /?/ /?/ vs. /?/ /?/ vs. /?/
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T2 Vowel Variation
/a/ /a/ /i/ /i/
/?/ /?/ /?/ /?/ /?/ /?/
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T2 Consonant Length
/t/ vs /tt/ /p/ vs /p/ /k/ vs /kk/
/s/ vs /ss/ /?/ vs /??/ /n/ vs /nn/ /m/ vs /mm/
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T2 Consonant Variation
/t/ /tt/ /p/ /pp/ /k/ /kk/
/s/ /ss/ /?/ /??/ /n/ /nn/ /m/ /mm/
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Discussion

• Phonological Representation
• Information allowing a segment to be
  distinguished phonemically.
• Phonetic Implementation
• Information pertaining to the articulation of a
  particular segment.

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• Our subject was maintaining a contrast for both
  consonants and vowels, though not implementing it
  in a nativelike fashion
• This supports our Hypothesis B that the L1 length
  feature can be re-deployed.

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Further Research

• Examination of learners perceptual abilities.
• Examination of native speakers perceptions of
  non-native speakers productions.
• Investigations of range produced by native
  speakers.

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