The Identification of English Consonants by Native Speakers of Italian

Abstract

This study examined the identification of English consonants in noise by native speakers of Italian. The effect of age of first exposure to English was evaluated by comparing three groups of subjects who continued to use Italian relatively often but differed according to their age of arrival (AOA) in Canada from Italy (early: 7, mid: 14, late: 19 years). The subjects in the late group made more errors identifying word-initial consonants than subjects in the early group did; however, the effect of AOA was nonsignificant for word-final stops. The effect of amount of native language (L1) use was evaluated by comparing two groups of early bilinguals who were matched for AOA (mean = 7 years) but differed according to self-reported percentage use of Italian (early: 32%, early-low: 8%). The early bilinguals who used Italian often (early) made significantly more errors identifying word-initial and word-final consonants than native English (NE) subjects did, whereas the early bilinguals who used Italian seldom (early-low) did not differ from the NE subjects. The subjects’ phonological short-term memory was estimated by having them repeat Italian non-words. This was done in an attempt to identify the source of individual differences. The nonword repetition scores were in fact found to independently account for 15% of the variance in subjects’ errors identifying word-final English consonants and 8% of the variance for word-initial consonants.

Language-independent processing in speech perception: Identification of English intervocalic consonants by speakers of eight European languages

“…For practical reasons, most studies of this type have been limited to pairs of languages, usually with English as the target language, paired variously with French (Florentine et al, 1984), Japanese (Takata and Nabelek, 1990), Italian (Mackay et al, 2001), Dutch (Cutler et al, 2004) or Spanish (Mayo et al, 1997;García Lecumberri and Cooke, 2006;Rogers et al, 2006), among others. However, it is difficult to draw strong conclusions about language-independent factors affecting speech intelligibility from paired-language studies, since the reduction in performance of non-native listeners could be ascribed to either L1 influences or to acoustic factors.…”

Formant Frequencies and Vowel Space Area in Javanese and Sundanese English Language Learners

“…This situation may bring advantages for the L1 with a complex vowel system. Speakers with a larger L1 vowel system may be more successful in using assimilation by changing the L1 category representation to match the L2 vowels creating mergers or comprising categories (Flege 2003, MacKay et al 2001). For instance, McAllister et al (2002) found that English speakers with a larger vowel system performed better in producing Spanish vowels.…”

Second Language Pronunciation Assessment

“…French & O'Brien, 2008), but also promoting learners' capacity to notice cross-language differences between L1 and L2 sounds and between pairs of contrasting L2 sounds (e.g. MacKay et al, 2001), which could enhance the formation of more accurate representations of L2 sound categories. Similarly, learners with more efficient attention control might be better able to flexibly switch their attention between L2 phonetic dimensions in contexts where they function contrastively (e.g.…”

“…Most researchers who explore the factors conditioning successful L2 acquisition in terms of individual differences in cognitive control do not specifically address learners' pronunciation (but see Dogil & Reiterer, 2009). Moreover, research investigating L2 phonological acquisition in late learners has revealed important inter-learner variability (see also Lindemann, this volume), both in naturalistic language learning (MacKay et al, 2001) and in phonetic training carried out in laboratory settings (Bradlow et al, 1997;Kim & Hazan, 2010). This suggests that individual factors play an important role in the acquisition of L2 phonology, just as they play a role in other domains of L2 acquisition (Dörnyei, 2006).…”