ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to report results of an investigation into the production of a covert contrast by native speakers of Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish in the acquisition of the English distinction between the high front vowels /i/ and /ɪ/. A covert contrast is a statistically reliable acoustic distinction made by a language learner between target-language phonemes that is nevertheless not perceived by native speakers of the target language. We gathered data on both the production and perception of this vowel contrast from a total of 36 second-language learners from the three native-language backgrounds, along with data from an additional 22 native-speaker controls. The findings are that about two-thirds of our second-language learners produced a covert contrast between the targeted vowel phonemes. In light of the results from research on child language acquisition and disordered speech, our data suggest that a covert contrast is not limited to the domain of the acquisition of a first language, either by normally developing children or by those with speech disorders.

摘要

本文的目的是报告由韩语，葡萄牙语和西班牙语为母语的母语人士在获得高阶元音/ i /和/ɪ/之间的英语区别时所产生的秘密对比的调查结果。隐性对比是语言学习者在目标语言音素之间做出的统计上可靠的声学区分，但目标语言的母语者却无法感知。我们从来自三个母语背景的总共36位第二语言学习者那里收集了有关此元音对比的产生和感知的数据，以及来自其他22个母语对照的数据。研究发现，大约三分之二的第二语言学习者在目标元音音素之间产生了隐蔽的对比。