The Influence of Age, Experience and Native -Language Phonology on Second-Language Speech Perception and Production

Next, to test the claim that judgments of cross-language similarity predict L2 perception/production abilities for children and adults alike, in Experiments 2 and 3 both the beginning and advanced Korean-English bilinguals performed English vowel discrimination and production tasks. Results indicated that judgments of cross-language similarity, as shown in Experiment 1, predicted the ability to perceive and produce sounds in the second language. Indeed, children, who were less likely to perceptually associate L2 sounds with L1 sounds, displayed a superior ability to produce L2 sounds both at beginning and more advanced levels, suggesting that L2 speech learning in childhood is less constrained by L1 phonology. In contrast, adults' perception/production skills were determined by the degree of L1-L2 perceptual similarity, implicating long-lasting effects of native-language phonology on adult L2 speech learning. These findings support the Category Expansion Hypothesis and lend evidence that child learners' superior attainment in L2 speech learning may indeed reflect the developmental state of the L1 sound system at the time of L2 learning.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Baker, Wendy

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mack, Molly

• Speech Communication

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3044046

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82615