L2 Phonology

1. L2 Phonology 10/4/17

2. What is phonology? • The study of sound systems • How sounds are organized in the mind into categories (phonemes) • Which combinations and distributions of sounds are possible in a language • blugis a possible English word but zlugis not • Segmental level • Individual sounds (/p/, /t/, /k/, etc.) • Suprasegmental level • Stress, intonation, tone, rhythm

3. Native language phonology – How early? • English infants listening to Salish /k’i/ and /q’i/ and Hindi /ta/ and /ʈa/ (Werker & Tees, 1984) • 6-8 month olds: almost all can hear the difference • 8-10 month olds: less than half can hear the difference • 10-12 month olds: almost none can hear the difference • By 1 year old, infants already have language-specific perception • Inverse relationship between native language perception ability and non-native language perception ability (Kuhl et al., 2008) • Better non-native language skill predicts slower language development Image from Dr. Patricia Kuhl’s Lab at the University of Washington

4. Processing of L2 sounds • Perception of L2 sounds is “filtered” through the L1 system • What do the results of studies on learners who have spent many years in the target language environment and studies on very early bilinguals show us about how the L1 and L2 are processed? • L1 and L2 sounds are processed differently, despite proficiency • L2 processing is less efficient • Critical period for phonology? • Analogy of losing the blueprints and tools for a new sound house in Lippi-Green (2012)

5. Processing of L2 sounds • Korean children adoptees in France (studies by Pallier & colleagues) • Adopted by French families at 3-10 years old • They speak French like native speakers and don’t remember Korean • fMRI results found no difference between the adoptees and native French speakers when listening to French • Possible to replace, but not add a new language if you have a phonological system already in place?

6. Perceptual Assimilation Model • Originally developed by Best for non-native, not L2 perception • Extended to L2 perception with PAM-L2 (Best & Tyler, 2007) • The way L2 sounds are assimilated to L1 sounds determines how difficult it will be to discriminate them • What happens if two L2 sounds are perceptually close to a single L1 sound? Which sound is different? German /u/ German /y/ Hard to discriminate English /u/

7. Perceptual Assimilation Model • What happens if two L2 sounds are perceived as two different L1 sounds? Which sound is different? German /a/ German /i/ Easy to discriminate English /i/ English /ʌ/

8. Speech Learning Model • Developed by Flege to account for L2 learning • L1 and L2 sounds exist in the same phonological space • Learning new L2 sounds is possible, as long as learners can discern at least some phonetic differences between the L1 and L2 sounds • According to this model, which sound would be more difficult to learn for an English speaker: Spanish /t/ or Spanish /r/? • Spanish /t/: the more similar a sound is to the L1 sound, the harder it will be for learners to create a new category

9. Effects of L1 phonology on L2 perception • What are the 3 types of perceptual illusions that Sebastián-Gallés (2005) talksabout? • Deafness: wecannothear a difference • Mirage: thelistenerperceives a soundthatisnotpresent in thesignal • Mutation: thelistenerchangesonesoundintoanother

10. Perceptual “Deafness” • If an acoustic dimension is not used in the L1 to differentiate sounds, learners will have difficulty using it in the L2 • Japanese perception of English /ɹ/ and /l/

11. = /ɺ/ (Japanese r) F2 = /w/ Japanesedon’t use F3 todifferentiatesounds in L1  hard to use in English F3 = /ʁ/ (German r) F2 = /l/ F3 = /ɹ/ (American r) F2 = /l/ Iverson et al. (2003) F3

12. Perceptual “Deafness” • Not only with segmentals, but suprasegmentals as well • What happens when French native speakers are asked to discriminate Spanish words that differ only in stress? • ABX task: can’t do it • BUT AX task: they can! • What’s the difference? • Non-native listeners aren’t actually deaf to dimensions in the signal not relevant in their L1 • Instead, their brains incorrectly discard these differences as irrelevant at a higher level of processing (e.g. when trying to match the speech input to words stored in memory)

13. Perceptual Mirage • What happens when Japanese speakers hear a word with two consonants together as in [ebza]? • Perceptually repaired to [ebuza] to fit with structure of Japanese, which only allows a consonant-vowel pattern • How many syllables do you hear in this word? • Tbilisi (Capital of Georgia): [tʰbilisi] 3 syllables

14. Perceptual Mutation • What happens when French speakers hear a word that starts with [tl]? • Perceptually repaired to [kl] to fit with structure of French, which doesn’t allow this sequence • What sounds does this word start with? • Original Nahuatl word for Tlaxcala, a state in Mexico: Tlaxcallān [tɬaʃkalːaːn]

15. L2 perception - Practice Can you guess which pairs of English words are hard for which learners? Is this an example of perceptual deafness, mirage, or mutation? Korean speakers Spanish speakers German speakers Brazilian Portuguese speakers Chinese speakers from Szechuan • “right” and “ride”    • “right” and “height”  • “specially” and “especially” • “sport” and “support” • “light” and “night” It’s not just L1 language that matters for L2 perception, but features of the speaker’s specific L1 dialect

16. L2 perception-production link • In general, accurate perception proceeds accurate production (Flege 1991, 1995), although some exceptions have been documented (Sheldon & Strange, 1982). • Accent is based in perception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C-vYY3SBDE • Can learners acquire a new accent like a native speaker of that language/dialect? • Case of Mr. Kahakua discussed in Lippi-Green (2012)

17. Accent Reduction Specialists How do these websites/apps reflect the discrimination that L2 speakers or speakers of nonstandard dialects face? In what ways are they inconsistent with an informed understanding of language and its acquisition?

18. Implications for teaching • Given what you know about the acquisition of L2 phonology, what is wrong with the following rubric? How would you fix it? • Oral presentation in a 100-level class foreign language class:

19. Teaching of L2 phonology Dimensions of L2 speech (Munro, Derwing, & Morton, 2006): • Accentedness: the degree to which the pronunciation of an utterance sounds different from an expected production pattern • Comprehensibility: listeners’ degree of difficulty in understanding an utterance • Intelligibility: the extent to which a speaker’s utterance is actually understand • Which dimensions are included in each level of the rubric?

20. Implications for L2 phono research • How do the goals of the researcher affect the interpretation of learners’ degree of success? • Most studies examine accuracy, often use monolingual native speakers as control group • Recently, researchers have called for the use of bilingual/multilingual control groups (Ortega, 2013) • Especially important for phonology, since L2 has been shown to affect pronunciation of L1 (e.g. /p t k/ by bilingual Spanish-English speakers, Zampini, 2013) • Need for more studies that examine methods for improvement in intelligibility/comprehensibility, relationship to perception and mental lexicon (plenary by Darcy, 2017)

21. Thank you! • Questions?