Establishing New Mappings between Familiar Phones: Neural and Behavioral Evidence for Early Automatic Processing of Nonnative Contrasts

Abstract

To attain native-like competence, second language (L2) learners must establish mappings between familiar speech sounds and new phoneme categories. For example, Spanish learners of English must learn that [d] and [ð], which are allophones of the same phoneme in Spanish, can distinguish meaning in English (i.e., /deɪ/ “day” and /ðeɪ/ “they”). Because adult listeners are less sensitive to allophonic than phonemic contrasts in their native language (L1), novel target language contrasts between L1 allophones may pose special difficulty for L2 learners. We investigate whether advanced Spanish late-learners of English overcome native language mappings to establish new phonological relations between familiar phones. We report behavioral and magnetoencepholographic (MEG) evidence from two experiments that measured the sensitivity and pre-attentive processing of three listener groups (L1 English, L1 Spanish, and advanced Spanish late-learners of English) to differences between three nonword stimulus pairs ([idi]-[iði], [idi]-[iɾi], and [iði]-[iɾi]) which differ in phones that play a different functional role in Spanish and English. Spanish and English listeners demonstrated greater sensitivity (larger d' scores) for nonword pairs distinguished by phonemic than by allophonic contrasts, mirroring previous findings. Spanish late-learners demonstrated sensitivity (large d' scores and MMN responses) to all three contrasts, suggesting that these L2 learners may have established a novel [d]-[ð] contrast despite the phonological relatedness of these sounds in the L1. Our results suggest that phonological relatedness influences perceived similarity, as evidenced by the results of the native speaker groups, but may not cause persistent difficulty for advanced L2 learners. Instead, L2 learners are able to use cues that are present in their input to establish new mappings between familiar phones.

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

“…To further investigate response patterns, we also computed d-prime (d′) for each participant, contrasting vowel mismatches with matching real words, and tone mismatches with real words. Laplace smoothing was used to correct for infinite values (Jurafsky and Martin, 2009;Barrios et al, 2016). As with accuracy, d′ results suggest overall higher sensitivity to mismatches for L1 listeners, with better scores for tone mismatches compared to vowel mismatches (vowel d′ 3.49, sd 0.49; tone d′ 3.91, sd 0.41).…”

Even in the Best-Case Scenario L2 Learners Have Persistent Difficulty Perceiving and Utilizing Tones in Mandarin

“…The L1 group displayed high accuracy across all conditions, while the L2 group had noticeably lower accuracy overall, with tone nonwords registering the lowest. D-prime (d 0 ) was also calculated for each participant, contrasting vowel nonwords and real words, and tone nonwords and real words, using Laplace smoothing to correct for infinite values (Barrios et al, 2016;Jurafsky & Martin, 2009). As with accuracy, d 0 results suggest overall higher sensitivity to nonwords for L1 listeners with little difference between nonword conditions (vowel d 0 = 3.78, sd = .46; tone d 0 = 3.81, sd = .46).…”

The Perception of Postalveolar English Obstruents by Spanish Speakers Learning English as a Foreign Language in Mexico

“…Several theoretical accounts have attempted to explain the obstacles learners face during their acquisition of the L2 phonology. Two such models are the Perceptual Assimilation Model applied to L2 learning (PAM-L2) (Best and Tyler 2007) and the Second Language Linguistic Perception model / contrasts (Barrios et al 2016a;Casillas 2015;Escudero and Boersma 2004;Flege et al 1994Flege et al , 1997Flege and Bohn 1989;Kondaurova and Francis 2008;Morrison 2008Morrison , 2009. Spanish has five phonemic vowels, /i e a o u/, and Spanish-speaking learners of English tend to assimilate both English /i/ and / Languages 2020, 5, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 19 phonology by the time they are learning the L2 (i.e., their L1), and they acquire these new sounds as a function of how they map them.…”

“…Several theoretical accounts have attempted to explain the obstacles learners face during their / contrast also presents a challenge for Spanish-speaking learners, as both English vowels are cross linguistically assimilated to a single Spanish vowel, /a/ (Barrios et al 2016a;Casillas and Simonet 2016). These findings indicate that the obstacles L2 learners encounter when acquiring the phonology of their L2 are, at least in part, determined by the listeners' native language background and the cross-linguistic assimilations established between L1 and L2 sounds.…”