Hörer- und Sprechertypen in Bremen und Hamburg. Eine Untersuchung zu Sprachwissen, Sprachwahrnehmung und Sprachgebrauch

Hettler, Yvonne

doi:10.13092/lo.85.4081

Cited by 1 publication

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“…A few studies deal with the salience of the vowel merger toward /eː/. These studies show that the vowel merger is classified by listeners as Standard German and not as a noticeable deviation, that is, listeners perceive the pronunciation of /ɛː/ as [eː] as Standard German ( Elmentaler and Rosenberg, 2015 ; Hettler, 2017 ; Kiesewalter, 2019 ). In another perception experiment ( Block et al, 2023 ), listeners from different regions could reliably identify vowel stimuli from speakers without a merger, whereas identification was more difficult for stimuli from speakers with a merger (for a further study on the perception of the two vowels, see Frank, in preparation ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

L1 variation and L2 acquisition: L1 German /eː/-/ɛː/ overlap and its effect on the acquisition of L2 English /ɛ/-/æ/

2023

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A person’s first language (L1) affects the way they acquire speech in a second language (L2). However, we know relatively little about the role different varieties of the L1 play in the acquisition of L2 speech. This study focuses on German (L1) learners of English (L2) and asks whether the degree to which German speakers distinguish between the two vowels /eː/ and /ɛː/ in their L1 has an impact on how well these individuals identify /æ/ and discriminate between the two English vowels /ɛ/ and /æ/. These two English vowels differ in both vowel quality and duration (/æ/ is longer than /ɛ/). We report on an identification and a discrimination experiment. In the first study, participants heard a sound file and were asked to indicate whether they heard “pen” or “pan” (or “pedal” or “paddle”). The stimuli differed from each other in terms of both vowel quality (11 steps on a spectral continuum from an extreme /æ/ to an extreme /ɛ/) and duration (short, middle, long). In the second study, participants had to signal whether two sound files they were exposed to differed from each other. We modeled the percentage of /æ/ (“pan,” “paddle”) selection (identification task only, binomial logistic regression), accuracy (discrimination task only, binomial logistic regression), and reaction time (identification and discrimination tasks, linear mixed effects models) by implementing the German Pillai score as a measure of vowel overlap in our analysis. Each participant has an individual Pillai score, which ranges from 0 (= merger of L1 German /eː/ and /ɛː/) to 1 (=maintenance of the contrast between L1 German /eː/ and /ɛː/) and had been established, prior to the perception experiments reported here, in a production study. Although the findings from the discrimination study remain inconclusive, the results from the identification test support the hypothesis that maintaining the vowel contrast in the L1 German leads to a more native-like identification of /æ/ in L2 English. We conclude that sociolinguistic variation in someone’s L1 can affect L2 acquisition.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%