Second Language Spanish Vowel Production: An Acoustic Analysis

Menke, Mandy R.; Face, Timothy L.

doi:10.1515/shll-2010-1069

Cited by 31 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Changes in the F2 of L2 vowels due to stress were not clear-cut. Phonetic vowel reduction has been shown in other studies with heritage Spanish speakers (Ronquest, 2013), late Spanish-English bilinguals (Menke and Face, 2010;Rallo Fabra, 2015), English learners of L2 Spanish (Cobb and Simonet, 2015), and native English speakers (Fourakis, 1991), but only for nonfinal vowels.…”

Section: L2 Acquisition Of Spanish Stress By Native English Speakersmentioning

confidence: 56%

“…Menke and Face (2010) reported that English-speaking learners of Spanish had some tendency towards centralization of unstressed vowels. In addition, Cobb and Simonet (2015) reported evidence of phonetic vowel reduction of some Spanish vowels not only in L1 English/L2 Spanish speakers, but also in native Spanish speakers.…”

Section: L2 Acquisition Of Spanish Stress By Native English Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is important to reiterate that we controlled for dialect variation by using only the data of L2 learners and native speakers from New York City and Mar del Plata, respectively, unlike other perception and production L2 and cross-linguistic studies (Cobb and Simonet, 2015;Escudero and Boersma, 2004;Menke, 2015;Menke and Face, 2010).…”

Section: Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stress-Induced Acoustic Variation in L2 and L1 Spanish Vowels

2018

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Aim: We assessed the effect of lexical stress on the duration and quality of Spanish word-final vowels /a, e, o/ produced by American English late intermediate learners of L2 Spanish, as compared to those of native L1 Argentine Spanish speakers. Methods: Participants read 54 real words ending in /a, e, o/, with either final or penultimate lexical stress, embedded in a text and a word list. We measured vowel duration and both F1 and F2 frequencies at 3 temporal points. Results: stressed vowels were longer than unstressed vowels, in Spanish L1 and L2. L1 and L2 Spanish stressed /a/ and /e/ had higher F1 values than their unstressed counterparts. Only the L2 speakers showed evidence of rising offglides for /e/ and /o/. The L2 and L1 Spanish vowel space was compressed in the absence of stress. Conclusion: Lexical stress affected the vowel quality of L1 and L2 Spanish vowels. We provide an up-to-date account of the formant trajectories of Argentine River Plate Spanish word-final /a, e, o/ and offer experimental support to the claim that stress affects the quality of Spanish vowels in word-final contexts.

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Section: L2 Acquisition Of Spanish Stress By Native English Speakersmentioning

confidence: 56%

Section: L2 Acquisition Of Spanish Stress By Native English Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Stress-Induced Acoustic Variation in L2 and L1 Spanish Vowels

2018

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“…Similarly, Alvord and Christiansen (2012) observed that students who had lived abroad for an extended period of time exhibit much better pronunciation ofthe Spanish spirants [ß, Ô, y] than those who have not been abroad. Face and Menke (2009) and Menke and Face (2010) also found that very advanced students who had been abroad produced more Spanish-like vowels and consonants than less advanced students who had not spent time abroad. Lord (2006) showed that students improve in their phonological memory after just 7 weeks abroad.…”

Section: Pronunciation In Language Classrooms and Study Abroadmentioning

confidence: 97%

On the relationship between L2 pronunciation and culture

Martinsen¹,

Alvord²

2012

SiC

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The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between students' cultural sensitivity and changes in their pronunciation while abroad The relationship between L2 pronunciation in Spanish and cultural sensitivity is explored in the study-abroad context. A significant correlation is discovered between the students' score on the Inventory of Cross-cultural Sensitivity and improvements in the accuracy of their pronunciation as judged by a panel of native Spanish speakers. This study provides empirical evidence that cultural factors enhance language learning. Implications for teaching include the need to incorporate cultural education as a basic component of the language classroom.

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“…Investigations of the production of Spanish vowels by native English speakers have shown that learners tend to substitute English vowels for Spanish vowels (Morrison 2003(Morrison , 2006, to reduce Spanish vowels in unstressed syllables (Menke & Face 2010, Rafat & MacLeod 2010, and to use a smaller proportion of the acoustic vowel space than native speakers (Menke & Face 2010, Reeder 1998. While these studies provide important insights into the process of acquiring the vocalic inventory of Spanish, they have left unaddressed the acquisition of sequences of two vowels, which can be syllabified as either a diphthong (monosyllabic glide + vowel sequences) or a hiatus (disyllabic vowel + vowel sequences).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating L2 Acquisition of Spanish Vocalic Sequences

MacLeod

2012

Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics

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While previous studies have investigated the acquisition of Spanish vowels by English speakers, none has examined how sequences of vowels are acquired. This study considers the developmental path of acquisition of diphthongs and hiatus by English-speaking learners of Spanish. Previous studies have found that duration is a robust acoustic cue to the difference between a diphthong and a hiatus (Face & Alvord 2004, Hualde & Prieto 2002. This study investigates how the durational difference is manifest in the speech of L2 learners of Spanish and how its realization changes as a function of proficiency in Spanish. In addition, transfer of a phonological constraint in English barring homorganic consonant-glide (CG) onset clusters (Davis & Hammond 1995, Ohala & Kawasaki-Fukumori 1997 and phonetic transfer of the relative intensity values of English glides, which have been found to be lower in English (MacLeod 2008), onto production of Spanish glides are also investigated. A delayed-repetition task with English and Spanish tokens tested 4 groups of speakers: beginning learners, intermediate learners, native Spanish speakers, and native English speakers. The results show that the learners produce a durational difference similar to the native speakers (in that hiatus were, on average, longer than diphthongs), but that the duration of the individual vowels was longer in the speech of the learners as compared to the native speakers. Transfer of the phonological constraint against homorganic CG clusters was found to some extent since glides in homorganic CG clusters were marginally statistically significantly longer than those in non-homorganic clusters in the speech of the beginning learners, but not for native Spanish speakers. In contrast, phonetic transfer of the relative intensity norms of English onto Spanish was not found since the learners produced Spanish glides with a higher relative intensity than the native Spanish speakers. The salience of duration and intensity for English speakers are discussed in concert with general articulatory concerns, both of the vocalic sequences themselves and in terms of the surrounding consonants.

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Second Language Spanish Vowel Production: An Acoustic Analysis

Cited by 31 publications

References 17 publications

Stress-Induced Acoustic Variation in L2 and L1 Spanish Vowels

Stress-Induced Acoustic Variation in L2 and L1 Spanish Vowels

On the relationship between L2 pronunciation and culture

Investigating L2 Acquisition of Spanish Vocalic Sequences

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