RESUMEN
The present study extends previous research reporting that orthographic forms, such as the use of a single letter or two letters to indicate the same sound, affect sound duration in second-language (L2) production. Native-language (L1) Korean L2 English sequential bilinguals performed a delayed repetition task for word pairs containing the same consonant or vowel spelled with one or two letters. Korean provided an interesting case because (1) it has an alphabetic orthographic system but not a Roman alphabet and thus, there may be no interorthographic interference and (2) it has no phonemic length contrast for vowels, whereas there is some disagreement on the contrastiveness of the consonant length, which can lead to an asymmetry in the grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence between vowels and consonants. The results showed that Korean learners produced the same English vowel with a short duration when spelled with a single letter and with a long duration when spelled with double letters or digraphs composed of two different letters; this variation in duration did not appear when producing English consonants spelled with a single or two letters. This study further examined whether individual differences in inhibitory control influenced the magnitude of orthographic effects in the production of English vowels by Korean learners. Individual differences in inhibitory control were not strongly related to the influence of orthography on vowel production.
RESUMEN
Research shows that the orthographic forms ("spellings") of second language (L2) words affect speech production in L2 speakers. This study investigated whether English orthographic forms lead L2 speakers to produce English homophonic word pairs as phonological minimal pairs. Targets were 33 orthographic minimal pairs, that is to say homophonic words that would be pronounced as phonological minimal pairs if orthography affects pronunciation. Word pairs contained the same target sound spelled with one letter or two, such as the /n/ in finish and Finnish (both /'fɪnɪÊ/ in Standard British English). To test for effects of length and type of L2 exposure, we compared Italian instructed learners of English, Italian-English late bilinguals with lengthy naturalistic exposure, and English natives. A reading-aloud task revealed that Italian speakers of EnglishL2 produce two English homophonic words as a minimal pair distinguished by different consonant or vowel length, for instance producing the target /'fɪnɪÊ/ with a short [n] or a long [nË] to reflect the number of consonant letters in the spelling of the words finish and Finnish. Similar effects were found on the pronunciation of vowels, for instance in the orthographic pair scene-seen (both /siËn/). Naturalistic exposure did not reduce orthographic effects, as effects were found both in learners and in late bilinguals living in an English-speaking environment. It appears that the orthographic form of L2 words can result in the establishment of a phonological contrast that does not exist in the target language. Results have implications for models of L2 phonological development.
Asunto(s)
Lenguaje , Multilingüismo , Fonética , Habla , Adolescente , Femenino , Humanos , Italia , Aprendizaje , Masculino , LecturaRESUMEN
The use of orthographic and phonological information in spoken word recognition was studied in a visual world task where L1 Finnish learners of L2 French (n = 64) and L1 French native speakers (n = 24) were asked to match spoken word forms with printed words while their eye movements were recorded. In Experiment 1, French target words were contrasted with competitors having a longer (