Barrios Shannon L, Namyst Anna M, Lau Ellen F, Feldman Naomi H, Idsardi William J
Department of Linguistics, University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park College Park, MD, USA.
Front Psychol. 2016 Jun 30;7:995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00995. eCollection 2016.
To attain native-like competence, second language (L2) learners must establish mappings between familiar speech sounds and new phoneme categories. For example, Spanish learners of English must learn that [d] and [ð], which are allophones of the same phoneme in Spanish, can distinguish meaning in English (i.e., /deɪ/ "day" and /ðeɪ/ "they"). Because adult listeners are less sensitive to allophonic than phonemic contrasts in their native language (L1), novel target language contrasts between L1 allophones may pose special difficulty for L2 learners. We investigate whether advanced Spanish late-learners of English overcome native language mappings to establish new phonological relations between familiar phones. We report behavioral and magnetoencepholographic (MEG) evidence from two experiments that measured the sensitivity and pre-attentive processing of three listener groups (L1 English, L1 Spanish, and advanced Spanish late-learners of English) to differences between three nonword stimulus pairs ([idi]-[iði], [idi]-[iɾi], and [iði]-[iɾi]) which differ in phones that play a different functional role in Spanish and English. Spanish and English listeners demonstrated greater sensitivity (larger d' scores) for nonword pairs distinguished by phonemic than by allophonic contrasts, mirroring previous findings. Spanish late-learners demonstrated sensitivity (large d' scores and MMN responses) to all three contrasts, suggesting that these L2 learners may have established a novel [d]-[ð] contrast despite the phonological relatedness of these sounds in the L1. Our results suggest that phonological relatedness influences perceived similarity, as evidenced by the results of the native speaker groups, but may not cause persistent difficulty for advanced L2 learners. Instead, L2 learners are able to use cues that are present in their input to establish new mappings between familiar phones.
为了获得像母语者一样的能力，第二语言（L2）学习者必须在熟悉的语音和新的音素类别之间建立映射关系。例如，学习英语的西班牙语学习者必须明白，[d]和[ð]在西班牙语中是同一音素的音位变体，但在英语中却能区分意义（即/deɪ/“day”和/ðeɪ/“they”）。由于成年听众对母语（L1）中语音变体的对比不如音素对比敏感，L1音位变体之间新的目标语言对比可能会给L2学习者带来特殊困难。我们研究了英语的高级西班牙语晚学者是否会克服母语映射，在熟悉的音素之间建立新的语音关系。我们报告了来自两个实验的行为和脑磁图（MEG）证据，这两个实验测量了三组听众（L1为英语、L1为西班牙语、英语的高级西班牙语晚学者）对三个非词刺激对（[idi]-[iði]、[idi]-[iɾi]和[iði]-[iɾi]）之间差异的敏感性和前注意加工，这些刺激对在西班牙语和英语中具有不同功能作用的音素上存在差异。西班牙语和英语听众对由音素对比而非语音变体对比区分的非词对表现出更高的敏感性（更大的d'分数），这与之前的研究结果一致。西班牙语晚学者对所有三种对比都表现出敏感性（大的d'分数和失匹配负波反应），这表明这些L2学习者可能已经建立了一种新的[d]-[ð]对比，尽管这些音在L1中存在语音相关性。我们的结果表明，语音相关性会影响感知到的相似性，这在母语者组的结果中得到了证明，但可能不会给高级L2学习者带来持续的困难。相反，L2学习者能够利用输入中存在的线索在熟悉的音素之间建立新的映射。
