Acquiring a new second language contrast: an analysis of the English laryngeal system of native speakers of Dutch

Abstract

This study examines the acquisition of the English laryngeal system by native speakers of (Belgian) Dutch. Both languages have a twoway laryngeal system, but while Dutch contrasts prevoiced with short-lag stops, English has a contrast between short-lag and longlag stops. The primary aim of the article is to test two hypotheses on the acquisition process based on first language acquisition research: (1) native speakers of a voicing language will succeed in producing short-lag stops in the target aspirating language, since short-lag stops occur early in first language acquisition and can be considered unmarked and since one member of the contrast is formed by shortlag stops in both voicing and aspirating languages, and (2) native speakers of a voicing language will succeed in acquiring long-lag stops in the target language, because aspiration is an acoustically salient realization. The analysis is based on an examination of natural speech data (conversations between dyads of informants), combined with the results of a controlled reading task. Both types of data were gathered in Dutch as well as in Eng Dutch (i.e. the English speech of native speakers of Dutch). The analysis revealed an interesting pattern: while the first language (L1) Dutch speakers were successful in acquiring long-lag aspirated stops (confirming hypothesis 2), they did not acquire English short-lag stops (rejecting hypothesis 1). Instead of the target short-lag stops, the L1 Dutch speakers produced prevoiced stops and frequently transferred regressive voice assimilation with voiced stops as triggers from Dutch into English.

Cross-linguistic interaction in trilingual phonological development: the role of the input in the acquisition of the voicing contrast

“…It is worth noting, however, that the incidence of prevoicing in the children"s productions, i.e. 13% of Maya"s and 20% of Sofia"s English voiced stops, is not excessive and consistent with those of English monolinguals reported elsewhere (Docherty, 1992;Lisker & Abramson, 1964;Simon, 2009). …”

Perception and Production of Consonants of English by Pakistani Speakers

“…Languages like Arabic (Flege & Port, 1981), Saraiki , Dutch (Simon, 2009(Simon, , 2011, Spanish (Flege & Eefting, 1988), Russian (Backley, 2011), Japanese (Shimizu, 2011), Hungarian (Lisker & Abramson, 1964, etc. are considered voicing languages but German (Hamann, 2011), English (Honeybone, 2005), Swedish, Korean, Icelandic (Backley, 2011), etc.…”

Laryngeal stop systems in contact

“…In order to get insight into the linguistic processes at work in adult L2 acquisition of a laryngeal system, this section discusses the results of a recent production study on the acquisition of the laryngeal system of an aspirating language, English, by native speakers of a voicing language, Dutch (Simon 2009). In this study, the extent to which native Dutch speakers have acquired the English laryngeal contrast is measured by the extent to which they produce target-like VOT values in English.…”