The Acquisition of a Complex Phonological Contrast: Voice Timing Patterns of English Initial Stops by Native French Speakers

Christiane Laeufer

doi:10.1159/000262190

Article

The Acquisition of a Complex Phonological Contrast: Voice Timing Patterns of English Initial Stops by Native French Speakers

Published/Copyright: November 20, 2009

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From the journal Phonetica Volume 53 Issue 1-2

Abstract

This study examines the acquisition of the glottal and supra-glottal timing patterns of English initial stops by French speakers. French speakers have greater difficulty reducing the duration of glottal pulsing for English /bdg/ than producing long-lag voice onset time (VOT) and the concurrent reduction in closure duration for /ptk/. This is ascribed to the greater articulatory complexity of English /bdg/ for French speakers, the lower degree of perceptual salience of differences in glottal pulsing, compared to differences in VOT, the existence in English of a competing pattern of more fully voiced /bdg/, and the existence in French of aspirated contextual variants of the lingual stops before high vowels. The latter also explains why long-lag VOT is more difficult to acquire for the labial than for the lingual stops. Acquisition of English-like VOT appears to proceed from (1) positive transfer from French of long voicing lag for lingual stops in high vowel contexts, to (2) distributional extension to nonhigh vowel contexts and to the labial stop, and to (3) gradual stretching of the lag to better approximate the English norm. The acquisition of English-like voicing appears to proceed in a similar fashion.

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Received: 1990-08-06

Accepted: 1995-02-24

Published Online: 2009-11-20

Published in Print: 1996-01-01

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https://doi.org/10.1159/000262190