sequential articulation in L2

[Lise Menn]

I did an experiment with Japanese learners of English and English
learners of Russian once to try to work on this, but most of the
combinations that were novel to the learners involved 'r' consonant
clusters (e.g. /tr/ for japanese speakers, /vstr/ for English
speakers) and the newness of the phonetics of the respective /r/
phones was still so much of an issue that we never got to the
phonotactic demands themselves.  Bad design on my part, of course,
not to have thought of that in advance, so we never submitted it for
publication.
     But since phonotactic constraints play such a huge role in L1
(see almost anything I've written on child phonology!), one has to
expect that the same will be true in L2.
     Lise Menn

kids who  can say
On May 17, 2005, at 3:42 PM, Ping Li wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> A student of mine is interested in doing some work on L2
> phonological acquisition/production. So far it seems that most of
> the literature on perceived accent in a foreign language is on the
> segmental level such as the vowel quality or VOT of consonants
> (e.g., James Flege's work). There is also recent evidence that
> prosodic structure may be an important dimension.
>
> One intuitive impression of mine is that often a L2 speaker is able
> to pronounce the individual phonemes accurately in isolation, but
> when it comes to assemble the phonemes in a word, or to put several
> words together, problems would occur that make the speaker sound
> non-native. In other words, individual vowels or consonants can be
> produced to near native accuracy, but the coordination of sound
> sequences causes the trouble in perceived accent. I have
> communicated this idea with several colleagues in L2 phonological
> acquisition, and they seem to indicate that there might be some
> truth to the idea. Unfortunately I could not find  solid studies
> that would confirm or disconfirm this impression. I myself am not
> very well informed of studies in L2 phonological acquisition. Hence
> I am writing to ask if you could provide some pointers or references.
>
> If the problem of L2 accent lies in the sequential articulation
> (more so than in producing individual phonemes), then one can
> hypothesize that there may be some maturational constraints to the
> ability of motor planning and programming, or control of speech
> apparatus, in early vs. late bilingual learners. One can also
> predict that children are better at saying tongue twisters than
> adults. A wide open question...
>
> Thanks for any pointers or insights.
>
> Ping Li
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ping Li, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor
> Graduate Program Coordinator
> Department of Psychology
> University of Richmond
> Richmond, VA 23173, USA
> Email: pli at richmond.edu
> http://www.richmond.edu/~pli/
> http://cogsci.richmond.edu/
>
> Bilingualism: Language and Cognition:
> http://cogsci.richmond.edu/bilingualism/bilingualism.html
> ----------------------------------------------------------




Beware Procrustes bearing Occam's razor.

Prof. Lise Menn
University of Colorado/Boulder;  University of Hunan/Changsha
Secretary, AAAS Section Z (Linguistics)
                                                   office phone
303-492-1609
Department of Linguistics            home fax     303-413-0017
           Office: Hellems 293
Mailing address:
     295    UCB
     University of Colorado
     Boulder, CO 80309-0295

Lise Menn's home page
http://www.colorado.edu/linguistics/faculty/lmenn/

"Shirley Says: Living with Aphasia"
http://spot.colorado.edu/~menn/Shirley4.pdf

Japanese version of "Shirley Says"
http://www.bayget.com/inpaku/kinen9.htm

Academy of Aphasia
http://www.academyofaphasia.org/

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