A Longitudinal Study on the Role of Lexical Stress and Motivation in the Perception and Production of L2 Spanish Stop Consonants
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A LONGITUDINAL STUDY ON THE ROLE OF LEXICAL STRESS AND MOTIVATION IN THE PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION OF L2 SPANISH STOP CONSONANTS A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish By Charles Nagle, M.S. Washington, DC October 31, 2014 Copyright 2014 by Charles Nagle All Rights Reserved ii A LONGITUDINAL STUDY ON THE ROLE OF LEXICAL STRESS AND MOTIVATION IN THE PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION OF L2 SPANISH STOP CONSONANTS Charles Nagle, M.S. Thesis Advisor: Cristina Sanz, Ph.D. & Alfonso Morales-Front, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This study investigated the perception and production of two L2 stop consonants, examining the importance of lexical stress and motivation to learners’ ability to discriminate and produce Spanish /b/ and /p/. Longitudinal data was collected from 26 English-speaking adults enrolled in a second-semester Spanish course at the time of recruitment. On five occasions over a year-long period spanning nearly three semesters of Spanish instruction, participants completed a discrimination task and two production tasks: a sentence formation task and a sentence reading task. Once per semester, they also completed a language contact questionnaire, a quantitative motivation questionnaire operationalizing aspects of the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2009), and a qualitative questionnaire eliciting information on their language learning goals and beliefs. For each of four contrasts crossing stress and position in the word, I calculated d’ as a measure of participants’ ability to discriminate the stops (Macmillan & Creelman, 2005). On the production data, I took VOT measurements from word-initial targets and C:V intensity ratio measurements, which index degree of lenition (Hualde, Simonet, & Nadeu, 2011), from word- medial targets using Praat software (Boersma & Weenik, 2012). In characterizing the findings, both accuracy and stability were taken into account. Learners developed short-lag /p/ more quickly than lead-lag /b/, but the lead-lag category proved more resilient after a brief hiatus from Spanish during Winter Break. In contrast, there was little iii development of word-medial stops at the group level, though some individuals succeeded in producing targetlike C:V intensity ratios, indicating that they had acquired the phonological distribution of stops and approximants in Spanish. Consequently, phonetic detail (i.e., VOT) may be easier to acquire than phonological alternations (i.e., lenition). Regarding stress and motivation, the primary predictors of interest, the former was more related to performance and the latter to development. Participants’ discriminated stops more readily in stressed syllables and produced medial /b/ with greater degrees of lenition in unstressed syllables. In terms of motivation, a stronger ideal L2 self was negatively related to VOT development. This finding suggests that at lower instructional levels, learners likely prioritize grammar and vocabulary, potentially excluding pronunciation from their motivational systems. iv Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express sincere gratitude to my dissertation committee: Cristina Sanz, Alfonso Morales-Front, and Lourdes Ortega. You have all been an incredible source of support and inspiration over the years, shaping how I approach the field and my thoughts about what it means to be an active participant in the research community. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me on so many occasions. To Ron Leow, Rusan Chen, and Jared Linck for their guidance and insight on research design and statistical methods. To my colleagues at Georgetown, Germán Zárate-Sández, Cecily Raynor, Jessica Cox, Ellen Johnson Serafini, Silvia Marijuan, Haein Lauren Park, Allison Caras, and Pablo Camus, as well as many others, for their friendship, support and understanding. There are many people outside of Georgetown that I would also like to thank. To Katie Vater, who has been an unwavering source of support over the years. To my family, who has always encouraged me to pursue my passion. To my Mom, Nancy Nagle, who has always been my biggest fan and one of the hardest working people I know. To Peter Cruz, Jr. You are truly an incredible person. You challenge me, support me, and make me laugh. You are a constant source of strength. I could not have done what I have done without you. Charles L. Nagle v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................................. xiv Chapter 2: Background .................................................................................................................... 7 Approaches to Phonological Development .................................................................................. 7 Optimality Theory .................................................................................................................... 9 The Native Language Magnet Model .................................................................................... 11 The Speech Learning Model, Perceptual Assimilation Model, and Ontogeny Model .......... 17 Learnability in Phonology ......................................................................................................... 23 L1 transfer .............................................................................................................................. 23 Markedness as a developmental constraint ............................................................................ 27 Complexity ............................................................................................................................. 33 Learner Factors Related to L2 Pronunciation Accuracy ............................................................ 34 Language Use ......................................................................................................................... 35 Concern for pronunciation vs. general motivation ................................................................. 37 Contemporary theories of motivation in SLA ........................................................................ 40 Research on L2 Pronunciation Development ............................................................................ 43 Longitudinal Research and L2 Development ............................................................................ 52 Processes in Speech Perception ................................................................................................. 56 Target Structure ......................................................................................................................... 65 Voice Onset Time. ................................................................................................................. 66 Lenition as C:V intensity ratio ............................................................................................... 71 Stop consonants in English and Spanish ................................................................................ 74 Research Questions .................................................................................................................... 77 Chapter 3: Method ......................................................................................................................... 78 Participants ................................................................................................................................. 78 Learner bio-data ..................................................................................................................... 80 Procedure ................................................................................................................................... 82 Instruments ................................................................................................................................. 86 Language contact survey ........................................................................................................ 86 vi Rationale for target characters containing /b/ and /p/ ............................................................ 87 Training task ........................................................................................................................... 89 Production tasks ..................................................................................................................... 90 Discrimination task ................................................................................................................ 91 Quantitative selves survey ...................................................................................................... 93 Qualitative questionnaire ....................................................................................................... 93 Exit questionnaire ................................................................................................................... 94 Coding & Scoring ...................................................................................................................... 95 d’ ............................................................................................................................................ 95 VOT ........................................................................................................................................ 96 C:V intensity ratio .................................................................................................................