出版社：Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto
摘要：This thesis examines the acquisition of the English lax-tense contrast in front vowels (/i/-/I/, /e I /-/ε/) by adult Catalan learners of English as a second language. The English lax-tense distinction is based on differences in tongue position, duration and phonotactic distribution, where lax vowels are restricted to closed syllables. Importantly, Catalan has a similar vowel height distinction (/i/, /e/, /ε/), but no duration contrast or phonotactic restrictions for vowels. Further, English, but not Catalan, has ambisyllabic consonants. These specific differences raise the following two questions: How do second language learners acquire a novel segmental contrast, and how does the acquisition of nonsegmental information interact with the acquisition of segmental structure? These questions are addressed in a series of perception, production and psycholinguistic experiments. The perceptual similarity of English and Catalan vowels is assessed to predict relative success in vowel acquisition. Results from perception and production experiments illustrate that perceived similarity alone does not predict the likelihood of accurate perception and production. Specifically, duration, a non-L1 feature, was used to establish a contrast for a vowel that had no close match in Catalan. This in turn influenced the cues used in the categorization of the other vowel in the pair despite having a near identical match in the L1. Further, differences in L1 and L2 cue weighting for highly similar vowels may affect perception accuracy. These findings demonstrate that factors such as relative weighting of phonetic cues and the need to establish oppositions must be taken into account when predicting success in acquisition. The role of nonsegmental information is investigated using syllable manipulation and picture matching tasks. Catalan learners of English demonstrate knowledge of English vowel phonotactics. However, use of this constraint is limited by interference from L1 syllabification, which in turn may affect production ability. Additional evidence for the interaction of segmental and nonsegmental structure in L2 acquisition comes from correlated results across experiments. Taken together, the findings underscore the need to regard vowels as members of a contrastive system rather than individually acquired categories and to consider nonsegmental information in the acquisition of L2 phonological structure.
关键词：Syllabification;Phonotactics;Second Language Learning;L1;L2;Vowels;Lax;Tense;English;Catalan
