The Interlingual Identification of Spanish and English Vowels: Orthographic Evidence

Abstract

When someone who is learning a second language (L2) produces a sound in the L2 using a familiar, native-language (L1) category, the L2 sound is said to have been "identified with" an L1 sound. Although interlingual identification exerts a powerful influence on L2 pronunciation, it is still poorly understood. Orthographic classification was used here to assess the interlingual identification of Spanish and English vowels. Sixty native speakers of Spanish in three experiments judged the vowels /i/, /I/, /e/, and /ae/ in multiple tokens of English words ("beat", "bit", "bet", "bat") spoken by ten native speakers of American English. The subjects labelled each English vowel by circling one of the five letters used to spell the vowel phonemes of Spanish (viz. less than i greater than, less than e greater than, less than a greater than, less than o greater than, less than u greater than) or by circling "none" if they thought they had heard a vowel not found in Spanish. Subjects who spoke English as an L2 used the "none" label more often than did Spanish monolinguals, suggesting that L2 learning heightens bilinguals' awareness of cross-language phonetic differences. Experienced Spanish speakers of English did use the "none" label more often than did inexperienced subjects (42% vs. 18%). A few subjects used the "none" label consistently for /ae/ and /I/, suggesting that they may have regarded these vowels as "new" (i.e., non-Spanish). However, the group data provided little support for the hypothesis that the adult Spanish learners of English treated either /ae/ or /I/ as new. The great majority of subjects, even those highly experienced in English, identified English /ae/ with their Spanish /a/.

Auditory and categorical effects on cross-language vowel perception

“…So, too, we expected the English /o/'s to match the native English subjects' category better than the Spanish subjects' /a/ category, and vice versa (see Table I, and Flege, 1989Flege, , 1991.…”

“…The results of several recent vowel studies, when taken together, suggest that at least some adult Spanish L2 learners treat English /I/ as distinct from /i/-quality vowels (Flege, 1991;Flege and Bohn, 1989;Blankenship, 1991 ) .3…”

“…Flege ( 1991 ) found that the frequency with which Spanish speakers of English identified English/e/tokens in terms of Spanish/a/(or/e/) declined with increasing Englishlanguage experience. It may be that adult Spanish learners of English discover only gradually the phonetic dissimilarity between English/a•/and Spanish/a/and that those who do so may, as a result, be better at discriminating Spanish/a/and English/e/as the result of generating two distinct phonetic codes.…”

Bridging the Gap Between L2 Speech Perception Research and Phonological Theory

“…Fox, Flege & Munro (1995) show that Spanish listeners are not sensitive to durational information when categorizing vowels, and therefore may have problems with English vowels that differ in both duration and quality (for the same claim, see Bradlow, 1995). For the English /i/-/I/ distinction, Flege (1991) shows that monolingual Spanish listeners associate both English /i˘/ and English /I/ with Spanish /i/ (in both cases they prefer the Spanish /i/ category over the "none" category in an orthographic labelling experiment). According to Flege, this may explain why early Spanish learners of English use /i/ indiscriminately in their mental representations for English /i/ and /I/, which again would explain why they do not differentiate the two vowels in L2 production.…”

Eesti vokaalikategooriate piirid vene ja eesti emakeelega kõnelejate tajuruumis

“…Fonoloogiline kurtus on määratud eelkõige emakeele fonoloogilise süsteemiga, see ilmneb erinevate võõrkeelte puhul erinevalt (sõltuvalt võõrkeele fonoloogilisest süsteemist) ja võib esineda nii segmentaalsete kui ka prosoodiliste kategooriate tajumisel. Mõned näited: 1) jaapanlastel on raskusi eristada inglise keele foneeme /r/ ja /l/ (Yamada 1995, jt), sest jaapani keeles on ainult üks liikvida -/r/, mis kuuldeliselt on lähedasem pigem inglise /l/-le kui /r/-le (Takagi 1993); 2) hispaania emakeelega kõnelejad ei erista inglise vokaalfoneeme /i/ ja /I/ ning vastendavad neile hispaania keele /i/-vokaali (Flege 1991); 3) kontrastiivne kestus (lühikeste-pikkade foneemide vastandus) on omane kvantiteedi-keeltele, näiteks jaapani, eesti ja soome keelele, kuid kestusvastandust ei esine näiteks prantsuse, vene ja hispaania keeles; 4) rõhu akustilisteks korrelaatideks on valjus, põhitooni sagedus ja kestus (Lehiste 1970), kuid mitte kõik keeled ei kasuta neid tunnuseid rõhu väljendamiseks -kontrastiivse kestusega keeltes ei ole kestus rõhu korrelaadiks (Hayes 1995), näiteks eesti keeles on rõhk seotud valjuse ja põhitooniga, kuid vene keeles eelkõige kestusega (Bondarko 1977).…”