The Influence of Age, Experience and Native -Language Phonology on Second-Language Speech Perception and Production

Baker, Wendy

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Description

Title

The Influence of Age, Experience and Native -Language Phonology on Second-Language Speech Perception and Production

Author(s)

Baker, Wendy

Issue Date

2001

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Mack, Molly

Department of Study

Linguistics

Discipline

Linguistics

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

Speech Communication

Language

eng

Abstract

Next, to test the claim that judgments of cross-language similarity predict L2 perception/production abilities for children and adults alike, in Experiments 2 and 3 both the beginning and advanced Korean-English bilinguals performed English vowel discrimination and production tasks. Results indicated that judgments of cross-language similarity, as shown in Experiment 1, predicted the ability to perceive and produce sounds in the second language. Indeed, children, who were less likely to perceptually associate L2 sounds with L1 sounds, displayed a superior ability to produce L2 sounds both at beginning and more advanced levels, suggesting that L2 speech learning in childhood is less constrained by L1 phonology. In contrast, adults' perception/production skills were determined by the degree of L1-L2 perceptual similarity, implicating long-lasting effects of native-language phonology on adult L2 speech learning. These findings support the Category Expansion Hypothesis and lend evidence that child learners' superior attainment in L2 speech learning may indeed reflect the developmental state of the L1 sound system at the time of L2 learning.

Graduation Semester

2001

Type of Resource

text

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