The Acquisition of Subset and Superset Phonotactic Knowledge in a Second Language

Trapman, Mirjam; Kager, René

doi:10.1080/10489220903011636

Cited by 13 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 73 publications

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“…The Japanese group of the present study does not show this to be the case. The persistent use of knowledge of German phonotactic illegality in English by highly proficient German learners of English reported by Weber and Cutler (2006) does not prove that L1 filtering cannot disappear, but fits the prediction, while the results of Trapman and Kager (2009) and Boll-Avetisyan (2011) are compatible with this view as well as the opposite.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

“…At least two studies show that successful acquisition of L2 wellformedness of L1 illegal clusters is possible. Trapman and Kager (2009) found that Spanish learners of Dutch can acquire the higher wellformedness of biconsonantal onsets that are legal in Dutch, as compared to onsets that are unattested in Dutch, even though all onsets were unattested in Spanish. Early-stage learners did not assign significantly higher wordlikeness ratings to non-words with Dutch-legal onsets, while advanced learners did, indicating that successful learning had taken place.…”

Section: Acquisition Of L2 Phonotactic Wellformednessmentioning

confidence: 96%

“… 1. The opposite possibility is less likely because unlearning illegality seems to be hard (Weber & Cutler, 2006). The results of the three studies on L2 phonotactics that were discussed above (Weber & Cutler, 2006; Trapman & Kager, 2009; Boll-Avetisyan, 2011) indicate that (categorical) L1 illegality is transferred to an L2 and that L2 probabilistic phonotactics can be acquired. …”

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confidence: 98%

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Categorical phonotactic knowledge filters second language input, but probabilistic phonotactic knowledge can still be acquired

Lentz

Kager

2014

Lang Speech

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Probabilistic phonotactic knowledge facilitates perception, but categorical phonotactic illegality can cause misperceptions, especially of non-native phoneme combinations. If misperceptions induced by first language (L1) knowledge filter second language input, access to second language (L2) probabilistic phonotactics is potentially blocked for L2 acquisition. The facilitatory effects of L2 probabilistic phonotactics and categorical filtering effects of L1 phonotactics were compared and contrasted in a series of cross-modal priming experiments. Dutch native listeners and L1 Spanish and Japanese learners of Dutch had to perform a lexical decision task on Dutch words that started with /sC/ clusters that were of different degrees of probabilistic wellformedness in Dutch but illegal in Spanish and Japanese. Versions of target words with Spanish illegality resolving epenthesis in the clusters primed the Spanish group, showing an L1 filter; a similar effect was not found for the Japanese group. In addition, words with wellformed /sC/ clusters were recognised faster, showing a positive effect on processing of probabilistic wellformedness. However, Spanish learners with higher proficiency were facilitated to a greater extent by wellformed but epenthesised clusters, showing that although probabilistic learning occurs in spite of the L1 filter, the acquired probabilistic knowledge is still affected by L1 categorical knowledge. Categorical phonotactic and probabilistic knowledge are of a different nature and interact in acquisition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 75%

Section: Acquisition Of L2 Phonotactic Wellformednessmentioning

confidence: 96%

mentioning

confidence: 98%

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Categorical phonotactic knowledge filters second language input, but probabilistic phonotactic knowledge can still be acquired

Lentz

Kager

2014

Lang Speech

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“…However, native and non-native speakers are able to notice deviations from target-like pronunciation and perceive degrees of correctness in non-native speech. In addition, they are sensitive to phonotactic violations and able to self-correct and produce target-like sounds and prosodic patterns (Trapman & Kager, 2009). This indicates the existence of implicit metalinguistic knowledge about pronunciation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Mimicking accented speech as L2 phonological awareness

2013

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This study investigated Spanish-speaking learners' awareness of a non-distinctive phonetic difference between Spanish and English through a delayed mimicry paradigm. We assessed learners' speech production accuracy through voice onset time (VOT) duration measures in word-initial pre-vocalic /p t k/ in Spanish and English words, and in Spanish words produced with an English accent. In addition, the second language (L2) English words and the English-accented Spanish words were rated, respectively, by first language (L1) English and L1 Spanish listeners on 9-point accentedness scales. Spanish-speaking learners were found to modify their native short-lag laryngeal timing patterns significantly, producing longer VOT durations in L2 English and, crucially, in their production of English-accented Spanish words, than they did in the production of L1 Spanish words. This was taken as evidence of learners having developed tacit phonological awareness of the cross-language VOT difference between Spanish and English voiceless stops.

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“…Just such a filtering effect of Spanish prothetic repair on L2 English [#sC] can be found in both speech production, for example, producing sports as [ɛspɔɾts] (Carlisle, 1991; Daland & Norrmann-Vigil, 2015) and perception, for example, [ɛspɔɾts] primes sports (Freeman, Blumenfeld, & Marian, 2016; and a similar finding for Spanish learners of Dutch, Lentz & Kager, 2015). Despite this apparent filtering, Spanish speakers learn to accept L2 (Dutch) phonotactic sequences that are illicit in Spanish, including [#sC] (Trapman & Kager, 2009), suggesting that the filtering is not complete enough to preclude learning the conflicting L2 pattern.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making Room for Second Language Phonotactics: Effects of L2 Learning and Environment on First Language Speech Perception

Carlson

2018

Lang Speech

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Language-specific restrictions on sound sequences in words can lead to automatic perceptual repair of illicit sound sequences. As an example, no Spanish words begin with /s/-consonant sequences ([#sC]), and where necessary (e.g., foreign loanwords) [#sC] is repaired by inserting an initial [e], (e.g. foreign loanwords, cf., esnob, from English snob). As a result, Spanish speakers tend to perceive an illusory [e] before [#sC] sequences. Interestingly, this perceptual illusion is weaker in early Spanish-English bilinguals, whose other language, English, allows [#sC]. The present study explored whether this apparent influence of the English language on Spanish is restricted to early bilinguals, whose early language experience includes a mixture of both languages, or whether later learning of second language (L2) English can also induce a weakening of the first language (L1) perceptual illusion. Two groups of late Spanish-English bilinguals, immersed in Spanish or English, were tested on the same Spanish AX (same-different) discrimination task used in a study by Carlson et al., (2016) and their results compared with the Spanish monolinguals from Carlson et al.'s study. Like early bilinguals, late bilinguals exhibited a reduced impact of perceptual prothesis on discrimination accuracy. Additionally, late bilinguals, particularly in English immersion, were slowest when responding against the Spanish perceptual illusion. Robust L1 perceptual illusions thus appear to be malleable in the face of later L2 learning. It is argued that these results are consonant with the need for late bilinguals to navigate alternative, conflicting representations of the same acoustic material, even in unilingual L1 speech perception tasks.

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The Acquisition of Subset and Superset Phonotactic Knowledge in a Second Language

Cited by 13 publications

References 73 publications

Categorical phonotactic knowledge filters second language input, but probabilistic phonotactic knowledge can still be acquired

Categorical phonotactic knowledge filters second language input, but probabilistic phonotactic knowledge can still be acquired

Mimicking accented speech as L2 phonological awareness

Making Room for Second Language Phonotactics: Effects of L2 Learning and Environment on First Language Speech Perception

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