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Second Language Phonology 1

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bl e bottle: narrow focus phrase, contrastive to green bottle) bl ebottle: compound, meaning: a kind of jelly fish. Rhythm and Timing ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Second Language Phonology 1


1
Second Language Phonology 1
  • Thu Nguyen
  • Linguistics Program
  • School of E.M.S.A.H.
  • University of Queensland

2
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?

3
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)

4
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.

5
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

6
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

7
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.

8
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.

9
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

10
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)

11
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

12
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

13
- 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.

14
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

15
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)

16
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/

17
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.

18
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

19
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)

20
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 )

21
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

22
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23
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

24
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
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