Volume 80, Issue 3-4

This study investigated attention control in L2 phonological processing from a cognitive individual differences perspective, to determine its role in predicting phonological acquisition in adult L2 learning. Participants were 21 L1-Spanish learners of English, and 19 L1-English learners of Spanish. Attention control was measured through a novel speech-based attention-switching task. Phonological processing was assessed through a speeded ABX categorization task (perception) and a delayed sentence repetition task (production). Correlational analyses indicated that learners with more efficient attention switching skill and faster speed in correctly identifying the target phonetic features in the speech dimension under focus could perceptually discriminate L2 vowels at higher processing speed, but not at higher accuracy rates. Thus, attentional flexibility provided a processing advantage for difficult L2 contrasts but did not predict the extent to which precise representations for the target L2 vowels had been established. However, attention control was related to L2 learners’ ability to distinguish the contrasting L2 vowels in production. In addition, L2 learners’ accuracy in perceptually distinguishing between two contrasting vowels was significantly related to how much of a quality distinction between them they could make in production.

The diglossic situation in German-speaking Switzerland entails that both an Alemannic dialect and a Swiss standard variety of German are spoken. One phonological property of both Alemannic and Swiss Standard German (SSG) is contrastive quantity not only in vowels but also in consonants, namely lenis and fortis. This study aims to compare vowel and plosive closure durations as well as articulation rate (AR) between Alemannic and SSG in the varieties spoken in a rural area of the canton of Lucerne (LU) and an urban area of the canton of Zurich (ZH). In addition to the segment durations, an additional measure of vowel-to-vowel + consonant duration (V/(V + C)) ratios is calculated in order to account for possible compensation between vowel and closure durations. Stimuli consisted of words containing different vowel-consonant (VC) combinations. The main differences found are longer segment durations in Alemannic compared to SSG, three phonetic vowel categories in Alemannic that differ between LU and ZH, three stable V/(V + C) ratio categories, and three phonetic consonant categories lenis, fortis, and extrafortis in both Alemannic and SSG. Most importantly, younger ZH speakers produced overall shorter closure durations, calling into question a possible reduction of consonant categories due to a contact to German Standard German (GSG).

Previous research on the phonetic realization of Hawaiian glottal stops has shown that it can be produced several ways, including with creaky voice, full closure, or modal voice. This study investigates whether the realization is conditioned by word-level prosodic or metrical factors, which would be consistent with research demonstrating that segmental distribution and phonetic realization can be sensitive to word-internal structure. At the same time, it has also been shown that prosodic prominence, such as syllable stress, can affect phonetic realization. Data come from the 1970s–80s radio program Ka Leo Hawaiʻi. Using Parker Jones’ (Parker Jones, Oiwi. 2010. A computational phonology and morphology of Hawaiian . University of Oxford DPhil. thesis) computational prosodic grammar, words were parsed and glottal stops were automatically coded for word position, syllable stress, and prosodic word position. The frequency of the word containing the glottal stop was also calculated. Results show that full glottal closures are more likely at the beginning of a prosodic word, especially in word-medial position. Glottal stops with full closure in lexical word initial position are more likely in lower frequency words. The findings for Hawaiian glottal stop suggest that prosodic prominence does not condition a stronger realization, but rather, the role of the prosodic word is similar to other languages exhibiting phonetic cues to word-level prosodic structure.

Previous research has shown that /l/ in Spanish displays patterns of articulatory variability that are determined by a complex interaction of phonetic, phonological and dialectal factors. In this study, we report the results of an experiment using Ultrasound Tongue Imaging (UTI) that tests /l/-articulations in a dialectal cross-section of Spanish speakers. We show that lengthening of /l/ in phrase-edge contexts is accompanied by articulatory distinctions (e.g. root/dorsum retraction) for some speakers, whereas others produce lengthened realisations of /l/ in these contexts without observable differences in tongue position. We also find acoustic evidence for reduction in utterance-medial intervocalic and preconsonantal environments (duration, intensity, F1 frequency measures are discussed). However, articulatory correlates of reduction are not consistently observed across speakers in these contexts. As well as relating the results to prosodically-driven strengthening and reduction patterns, our findings are of relevance to debates about resyllabification in Spanish. Specifically, we argue that our results cannot be straightforwardly accommodated under phonological analysis assuming that word-final consonants regularly resyllabify across word boundaries prevocalically.