The L2 Production of Spanish Taps and Trills by L1 Romanian and L1 French Speakers
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The L2 Production of Spanish Taps and Trills by L1 Romanian and L1 French Speakers by Malina Radu A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish & Portuguese University of Toronto © Copyright by Malina Radu 2020 The L2 Production of Spanish Taps and Trills by L1 Romanian and L1 French Speakers Malina Radu Doctor of Philosophy Department of Spanish & Portuguese University of Toronto 2020 Abstract This dissertation explores two learning problems in L2 phonology: (1) acquiring a new L2 distribution when both sounds exist in the L1 as allophones; (2) acquiring the same L2 distribution when neither sound has a direct L1 counterpart. Previous literature has investigated these problems separately, focusing more on the first situation than the second. To explore these scenarios, I analysed the L2 production of Spanish taps and trills, which are contrastive word-medially intervocalically, by 10 L1 Romanian and 10 French speakers. 13 native Spanish controls were also included. These language pairings were chosen because Romanian has both rhotics as allophones (albeit in free variation), with the tap being the most common, and the trill sometimes occurring word-initially, while French has neither. Data was elicited using two tasks: a sentence reading (more formal, orthography) and a picture description task (less formal, no orthography). The stimuli included nonce and real words containing word-initial and word-medial rhotics. Because a secondary objective was to provide empirical evidence and acoustic analyses for rhotics in Romanian, participants also completed similar tasks in their L1. ii The results confirm previous observations that the most common Romanian rhotic is the tap. The trill mainly appears word-initially. The L2 data showed that the tap was less difficult than the trill, with both learner groups producing taps at high rates. However, both learner groups had low trilling rates. Though the L1 Romanian group produced more trills than the L1 French group overall, when the position of trills was considered, there were no differences between groups. Specifically, both learner groups had significantly higher trilling rates word-medially than initially, corroborating previous research, and there were no group differences. Furthermore, speakers produced more of the expected rhotics in the sentence reading than in the picture description task. Overall, given the low trilling rates, these findings suggest that recategorizing L1 allophones may be just as challenging as learning a new L2 distribution that does not have L1 counterparts, though the difficulties may be due to different reasons. Finally, this study also provides acoustic data supporting previous observations regarding Romanian rhotics. iii Acknowledgments Being a graduate student has been a part of my identity for many years, and so, this PhD means much more to me than its culmination point. I learned about far more than Linguistics and academia. I learned about me – my limits and my fears. And then, most importantly, I learned how to overcome them. This thesis would not have been possible without the support and encouragement, both academic and personal, of so many important people. My deepest gratitude goes to my committee members, or the “dream team”, as someone once called them: Laura Colantoni, Ana Teresa Pérez-Leroux, and Jeffrey Steele. To my supervisor, Laura, thank you for everything you have taught me, years before you became my thesis supervisor. Thank you for encouraging me to be confident in voicing my opinions. I owe a large part of my personal and professional development to your guidance for the past nine years. Ana Teresa, thank you for always being supportive and encouraging of my work. I am grateful to have had the chance to learn from you. Jeff, I am grateful for the time you took to offer careful, thought-provoking feedback and comments so that I could inspect things with a more critical eye, and, ultimately, become a better scholar. To my external committee members, Anabela Rato and Christine Shea: Thank you for your kind words on my thesis. I am grateful for your thoughtful feedback and questions, and I very much appreciated your warmth and positivity at the defence. iv I would also like to thank Anna Limanni and Yadira Álvarez López for being my introduction into the world of Linguistics and inspiring me so early in my academic career. It is thanks to your encouragement and passion for this field that I became interested in it. During my time as a student, I met several people who quickly became my friends, and made graduate school a memorable experience. Olivia and Olga, thank you for always being there to listen to all things thesis, teaching, and life in general. My heartfelt gratitude to a number of other people for their help, support, and friendship over the years: Gaby, Matt, Ruth, Ailén, Petre, Lulu and Meï-Lan. I would also like to thank the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and SGS. To all of the wonderful faculty and staff in the Department, thank you for your support, guidance and words of encouragement at various points throughout this process. I am also grateful for the financial assistance I have received, which allowed me to collect data, as well as travel for conferences, both within Canada and internationally. This financial support includes a SSHRC Doctoral, a Joseph Gulsoy Dissertation Scholarship, a Doctoral Completion Award, SGS Travel and Conference grants and a Milton A. Buchanan Fellowship. I extend my sincerest gratitude to all of my participants, and the people who were instrumental in helping me recruit them (Professor Laura Badescu, Professor Laura Spinu, and Ruth Martínez, among others). This thesis truly would not have been possible without my participants’ willingness to take part in the experiments. v Importantly, I am also grateful for all of my family and friends outside of academia. Thank you for checking on me, for being in my life, for allowing me to maintain balance, and for reminding me of who I am. Last but not least, thank you to those who have been in my life for much, much longer than the PhD. To my mom and dad: thank you for sacrificing so much to give me opportunities I would not have had otherwise. Thank you for encouraging me when I felt like I could not push forward and thank you for teaching me to believe in myself. Vă iubesc de la cer până la pământ. To Matthew: I am grateful for far more than I could ever write here. Thank you for always making me laugh and for reminding me that I can do it (whatever “it” may be). vi Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents .............................................................................................................. vii List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xii List of Figures ................................................................................................................... xv List of Appendices ............................................................................................................ xx Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Main objectives .................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The present study: Overview of research questions, methodology and general findings ........................................................................................................................... 4 1.3 Overall contributions ................................................................................................ 8 1.4 Thesis structure ......................................................................................................... 9 Chapter 2 Literature Review ............................................................................................. 11 Overview................................................................................................................... 11 2.1 The learning problems ....................................................................................... 14 L1 allophones to L2 phonemes ................................................................... 14 The acquisition of L2 contrasts when one or both sounds are absent from the L1 22 vii 2.2 Articulatory nature of trills, position within the word, effects of task formality and orthography on L2 phonological acquisition ......................................................... 28 Articulatory nature of rhotics and hyperarticulation .................................. 28 Effect of position in the word ..................................................................... 33 Effects of task formality on L2 phonological acquisition .......................... 40 Effects of orthography on L2 phonological acquisition ............................. 46 Summary of articulatory nature of trills, positional effects, task formality, and orthography ........................................................................................................ 55 2.3 Rhotics in Romanian, French, and Spanish ....................................................... 56 Romanian rhotics ........................................................................................ 57 French rhotics