Summary Details
| Query: |
L2 interdental substitutions
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| Author: | DAVE GOUGH | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Sociolinguistics
Language Acquisition |
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| Summary: |
L2 ENGLISH INTERDENTAL SUBSTITUTIONS: SUMMARY T he thing I asked about concerned the fact that L2 Englishes with similar L1 phoneme inventories that include [f] [s] and [t] etc. 'select' different realisations of TH and DH (e.g. Afrikaans 'fing', German 'sing' and Xhosa 'ting'). I found out the following (references at the end): An extensive summary and discussions of interdental substitution appeared on the Linguist List in 1996 (Vol-7-1108; Vol-7-859; Vol-7-1073; Vol-7-1164). 1. Castilian Spanish speakers, which have /th/ but no predorsal /s/, and where [dh] is as an allophone of /d/ (there are no voiced fricatives), use /th/ for Eng. /th/ and /d<>dh/ according to the context, for Eng. /dh/. Non-Castilian Spanish speakers, which lack /th/ but have a predorsal /s/, use /s/ for /th/, and also /d<>dh/ for the voiced counterpart. All Spanish dialects also have /f/. 2. Curiously, European French systematically has /s/ and /z/ for the English dental fricatives ("Mr. Smis") while Canadian French just as systematically has /t/ and /d/ ("Mr. Smit"), yet the two dialects are no different from each other than are British English and North American English. There appears to be no firmly established explanation for this.where it was. It has been proposed that this difference was due to a slight difference in the articulation of (French) dentals in Canada and Europe. An alternative proposal is that the difference may be related to the fact that Canadian French speakers were in contact with spoken English far more than European French speakers were, and that /t/, /d/ may be a more 'natural' realizations of the English interdental fricatives than /s/ and /z/. Note that elsewhere in germanic, when proto-germanic interdental fricatives were lost they typically merged with the dental stops, never the sibilants. 3. In most varieties of Indian English both the fricatives are replaced by corresponding dental stops. 4. Often there is positional variation in the choice of substite: For example James (1986) finds that Dutch speakers of L2 English substitute TH,DH with /t,d/ word-initially, but with /s,z/ word-finally. 5. Child language: Different children produce different substitutes, i.e. either [f,v], [s,z] or [t,d]. The selection may depend upon stage of development. 6. In both Qu\233bec and France French, [f,v] have been heard by one of the researchers. 4. Perceptually, [f,v] is frequently confused with TH,DH, even for native English speakers (Hancin-Bhatt 1994). 5. Perception-production asymmetry has been found (Hancin-Bhatt 1994; Nemser 1971). 6. Often one finds that L2 speakers approximate the target, e.g. producing an affricate [tTH]. 7. Weinberger (1990) observed that the segmental inventories of Japanese and Russian both have /s/ and /t/, but lack the voiceless dental fricative (English /th/in). Japanese learners of English mispronounce the English v-less fricative as /s/, Russians as /t/. Current theory does not appear to provide no explanation for the distinct L1 substitutions by Japanese and Russian learners. REFERENCES: Brannen, Kathleen (1999) "Perception of interdental fricatives by learners of L2 English: Experimental design and method." Handout from Psycholinguistic Shorts Conference, University of Ottawa. Hancin-Bhatt, Barbara Jean (1994) Phonological Transfer in Second Language Perception and Production, PhD Thesis. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. James, Allan (1986) Suprasegmental Phonology and Segmental Form. Niemeyer: T\252bingen. Nemser, William (1971) An Experimental Study of Phonological Interference in the English of Hungarians. Indiana University Press: Bloomington. Weinberger, S. 1990. Minimal segments in second language phonology, In J. Leather & A. James (eds.), New Sounds 90, Proceedings of the 1990 Amsterdam Symposium on the Acquisition of Second-Language Speech, Amersterdam: University of Amsterdam. RESOURCES: Swan & Smith's LEARNER ENGLISH or Avery & Ehrlich's TEACHING AMERICAN ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION which list the most common phonological and grammatical substitutions speakers of various languages tend to make Thanks to: Stephane Goyette Joaquim Brand\227o de Carvalho Marc Picard Hany Babu Anthony M. Lewis Kathleen Brannen (presently doing a PhD on the topic) Apologies to those who may have sent to my second address - this has basically collapsed it seems. |
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| LL Issue: | 10.662 | |
| Date Posted: | 05-May-1999 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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