Development and Recoverability of L2 Codas

Abstract

This study deals with the development and recoverability of wordfinal codas in Chinese-Swedish interlanguage. The relation between consonant deletion and vowel epenthesis is investigated from both a developmental perspective and a grammatical-functional one. Longitudinal, conversational data from three Chinese beginner learners of Swedish were analyzed. First, it is shown that for these learners the acquisition of Swedish codas was U-shaped rather than linear such that they exhibited relatively high accuracy rates at early stages, lower accuracy rates at later stages, and again high accuracy rates at more advanced stages. It is also demonstrated that the epenthesis-deletion differential is closely related to second language proficiency in that the proportion of epenthesis to deletion errors increases over time. Furthermore, the data show that word-final codas that are relatively important for the retention of semantically relevant information generate lower overall frequencies of simplification and greater epenthesis-deletion proportions than codas containing information that is relatively recoverable from other segments or features in the context. I would like to thank Björn Hammarberg, Kenneth Hyltenstam, and Roy Major for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. I am also grateful to four anonymous SSLA reviewers for their suggestions for revision. All remaining errors are mine.

First language influence and final consonant clusters in the new Englishes of Singapore and Nigeria

“…The same strategies – deletion, vowel epenthesis and metathesis – reported as structural properties of some varieties of English were found in a large number of studies on the production of coda consonant clusters in second language learner (L2) English (e.g. Tarone, 1976; 1980; Sato, 1984; Broselow, 1984; Hodne, 1985; Anderson, 1987; Eckman, 1991; Major, 1996; Hansen, 2001; Abrahamsson, 2003). However, it is not clear yet in which way L1 structures can be transferred to a second language (see Gass, 1996 and Odlin, 2003 for overviews).…”

“…Neither is it easy to determine in the case of consonant cluster production whether structures represent L1 transfer or language universals, or whether they are the result of a more subtle interplay between L1 and input dialects as envisaged in the model of a pool of variants (Mufwene, 2001). Empirical studies of L2 acquisition have shown that variation in final consonant cluster productions among language learners as well as for individual learners over the course of acquisition is enormous (Abrahamsson, 2003; Hansen, 2001). Which of the alternative forms is likely to enter the phonology of an emerging variety?…”

Phonotactics and Articulatory Coordination Interact in Phonology: Evidence from Nonnative Production

“…This is likely because her tokens were more variable, and more data would have been necessary to discern her pattern. The fact that speakers did not all behave the same is not surprising, as the second-language phonology literature has often reported individual differences in how speakers produce nonnative sequences (e.g., Abrahamsson, 2003;Broselow & Finer, 1991;Hansen, 2004). In the remainder of the analysis, I focus on a theoretical account of the majority of the speakers who repaired nonnative sequences with gestural mistiming.…”

“…One explanation for the commonality of this repair is that it maximizes the recoverability of the intended sequence. Researchers have suggested that when nonnative speakers are aware of the intended phonemes of the word they are attempting to produce, they prefer to preserve as much information as possible (e.g., Abrahamsson, 2003;Weinberger, 1994). This preference is violated by deleting or changing a gesture, explaining why MAX and IDENT are ranked above the RELEASE constraints.…”

Typological Differences in Morphological Patterns, Gender Features, and Thematic Structure in the L2 Acquisition of Ashaninka Spanish

“…In some cases, these differences include crosslinguistic differences in phonological patterns. As Abramsson (2003) notes, acquisition of word-final morphology may be affected by the lack of codas in L1 among Chinese L1-Swedish L2 learners. Difficulties in L2 acquisition of morphology in contexts of typological differences can be related to the role that processing of (morpho) syntactic patterns has in L2 acquisition (Pienemann 1998).…”