Vowel quality in intermediate L2 Spanish learners: a study of lexical, linguistic, and individual variables

ABSTRACT

The current study analyzes vowel quality production across the lexical factors of cognate status and timing of word introduction, the linguistic factor of vowel position (pre-tonic, tonic, or post-tonic), and individual factors including age of acquisition of Spanish and length of study abroad. Participants were 29 intermediate second language Spanish learners who completed an oral text reading task. Results found that learners pronounced vowels differently in early as compared to later introduced words and in tonic (stressed) position compared to unstressed (pre-tonic/post-tonic) position. However, cognate status and individual factors were in general not statistically significant. These results lead us to suggest that pronunciation instruction should ideally begin early in the acquisition process and include explanations of vowel production in unstressed syllables.

RESUMEN

El presente estudio analiza la calidad de la producción vocálica en los factores léxicos de estatus de cognado, teniendo en cuenta cuándo se introdujo la palabra, el factor lingüístico de posición vocálica (pretónica, tónica o postónica), y algunos factores individuales como la edad de adquisición del español y la duración de estudios en el extranjero. En el experimento participaron 29 estudiantes de nivel intermedio de español como L2 que completaron una prueba de lectura oral de un texto. Los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes pronunciaban las vocales de manera diferente en las palabras introducidas temprano en comparación con las que fueron introducidas más tarde, y en posición tónica comparada con la átona (pretónica/postónica). El estatus de cognado y las variables independientes, por lo general, no fueron estadísticamente significativos. Los resultados obtenidos indican que para reforzar el proceso de adquisición de una L2, la enseñanza de la pronunciación debería comenzar temprano e incluir además explicaciones explícitas sobre la producción vocálica en las sílabas átonas.

KEYWORDS:

• L2 pronunciation
• phonetics
• lexical factors
• Spanish
• vowel quality
• linguistic factors

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Pronunciación de L2
• fonética
• factores léxicos
• español
• calidad vocálica
• factores lingüísticos

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the University of Colorado Denver Office of Research Services for a Small Grant to pay a research assistant to help with data analysis and Sarah Lease for her data analysis expertise.

Notes

1 Although previous research has identified this lexical factor as word age of acquisition (AoA) (Flege et al. 1998; Montrul and Foote 2014), the present study has chosen to label it timing of word introduction. Since learners were not tested at the time that they presumably learned these words, it is impossible to know whether they were learned at the time that they were introduced. However, as second language learners are often asked to produce words they do not know, for the present study, it is more feasible to call this lexical factor timing of word introduction rather than timing of word learning. However, this is also mentioned below as a possible study limitation.

2 The current study was part of a larger project in which students enrolled in a third-year phonetics or oral proficiency course completed a background questionnaire, attitudes survey, and semester-long oral recordings and self-analysis project followed by a post-test and debriefing questionnaire. Results of the instructional study are reported elsewhere.

3 Although this method of normalization is best when used with all vowels, when comparing vowel charts before and after normalization, the same patterns emerged for all four vowels and all variables tested.