Auditory-orthographic integration at the onset of L2 speech acquisition

Abstract

Recent studies have provided evidence for both a positive and a negative effect of orthography on second language speech learning. However, not much is known about whether orthography can trigger a McGurk-like effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976) in second language speech learning. This study examined whether exposure to auditory and orthographic input may lead to a McGurk-like effect in naïve English-speaking participants learning a second language with Spanish phonology and orthography. Specifically, it reports on (a) production of non-target-like combinations such as [lj] as in [poljo] for <pollo>-[pojo], where the auditory Spanish [j] and the first language English [l] that correspond to the shared digraph <ll> are integrated, and (b) fusion quantified in terms of [z] devoicing such as [z̥apito] for<zapito>-[zapito]. Moreover, the effects of (a) type of grapheme-to-sound correspondence, (b) position in the word, and (c) condition of training and testing were examined. Participants were assigned to four groups: (a) auditory only, (b) orthography at training and production, (c) orthography at training, and (d) orthography at production. The positions included word-initial and word-medial. The grapheme-to-sound correspondences consisted of <v>-[b], <d>-[δ], <z>-[s] and <ll>-[j]. Results were indicative of a McGurk-like effect only for the Spanish digraph <ll>. The highest rate of combination productions was attested in the orthography-training condition in the word-medial position.

Orthographic forms affect speech perception in a second language: Consonant and vowel length in L2 English.

“…Looking at novel languages first, listeners perceive an extra sound in pseudowords in an artificial language that are spelled with a silent letter (Hayes-Harb et al, 2010). This orthographic effect is often a consequence of recoding the orthographic forms of a novel language according to the grapheme-phoneme correspondences of the L1, for instance L0 sound recognition is hindered if the L1 and the L0 have incongruent grapheme-phoneme conversion rules (Erdener & Burnham, 2005; Escudero & Wanrooij, 2010, Experiment 2; Mathieu, 2016; Rafat & Stevenson, 2019). Although such effects on novel language perception are useful to explanation and theory-building, it is not at all clear that novel language perception can shed light on the perception of real words in L2 listeners.…”

Towards Modeling Second Dialect Speech Learning: The Production of Bogota [s] in Ciudad Bolivar by Speakers of Three Different Varieties of Colombian Spanish

“…Positional asymmetries have previously been reported in L2 speech learning studies (see Colantoni and Steele 2006;Rafat 2011). The role of universal phonetic factors has also been examined in D2 and L2 speech learning (Varona et al 2018) and heritage speech as well (Rafat and Stevenson 2018).…”

The influence of orthography in second language phonological acquisition

“…The Polish learners realized German /o:/ as /ɔ/ and German /e:/ as /ei/, which the authors explain as combined effects of L1 grapheme-phoneme correspondences and the perceived similarity between L1 and L2 vowels (i.e., <o> corresponds to /o:/ in German but /ɔ/ in Polish, whereas <e> is /ɛ/ in Polish, but is acoustically closer to /ɪ/). The authors suggest that an interaction of auditory and orthographic input results in the production of a sound that is found in neither the L1 nor the L2 (see also, e.g., Rafat & Stevenson, 2019).…”

“…Building on the finding that incongruent grapheme-phoneme correspondences in Spanish and English can lead to orthography induced transfer, Rafat and Stevenson (2019) investigated whether simultaneous exposure to auditory and orthographic input can result in McGurk-like effects in L2 production. The McGurk effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976) is a perceptual illusion that is elicited when auditory and visual cues simultaneously presented to listeners provide conflicting information (auditory /ba/ is paired with facial/visual /ga/) and result in an integrated percept (a combination /bga/ or a fusion /da/) that is not contained in either the auditory or visual information.…”