Findings from a cross-sectional study of the Spanish vowel productions of sixty adult second language learners of Spanish are presented in this article. The data set is based upon digitally recorded readings of an authentic Spanish-language short story. An acoustic examination of F1 and F2 values was carried out on twenty tokens of each vowel, 10 in stressed syllables, 10 in unstressed. The findings show that learners in the early stages of their Spanish study struggle to produce vowels in a native-like way, but the vowels of more advanced learners are similar to those of native speakers. The unstressed vowels of all learners are produced with some degree of centralization, confirming the much theorized influence of English on Spanish vowel productions.

No abstract

Recent studies on the second language (L2) acquisition of irony and humor indicate that learners both use and recognize verbal irony in the target language and suggest that the ability to understand irony and to engage in verbal humor increases with greater

Rhotics, particularly the trill, are late acquired sounds in Spanish. Reports of Spanish-English bilingual preschoolers document age-appropriate articulations, but studies do not explore productions once exposure to English increases. This paper reports on the rhotic productions of a cross-sectional sample of 31 Spanish-English bilingual children, ages 6;8 to 13;5. Children produced taps with high rates of accuracy across age groups; the trill did not reach 80% target production until age 11;3, later than reported for monolingual speakers. Increased English exposure is explored as a contributing factor, arguing a need for continued study of bilingual phonological development beyond the preschool years.

Language immersion students’ lexical, syntactic, and pragmatic competencies are well documented, yet their phonological skill has remained relatively unexplored. This study investigates the Spanish vowel productions of a cross-sectional sample of 35 one-way Spanish immersion students. Learner productions were analyzed acoustically and compared to those of Spanish-English bilingual peers. Findings reveal that learners’ productions differ from those of their native Spanish-speaking peers on nearly all measures; observed differences may be the result of transfer of first language phonetic and phonological tendencies and the nature of the input received.