The effect of L1 regional variation on the perception and production of standard L1 and L2 vowels

This study reports on the perception and production of Standard Dutch and Standard British English vowels by speakers of two regional varieties of Belgian Dutch (East Flemish and Brabantine) which differ in their vowel realizations. Twenty-four native speakers of Dutch performed two picture-naming tasks and two vowel categorization tasks, in which they heard Standard Dutch or English vowels and were asked to map these onto orthographic representations of Dutch vowels. The results of the Dutch production and categorization tasks revealed that the participants’ L1 regional variety importantly in... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Simon, Ellen
Debaene, Mathijs
Van Herreweghe, Mieke
Dokumenttyp: journalarticle
Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
Schlagwörter: Languages and Literatures / production / perception / DUTCH / regional variation / L3 phonology / vowels / English as a Foreign Language / second language acquisition
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26675477
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/6979024

This study reports on the perception and production of Standard Dutch and Standard British English vowels by speakers of two regional varieties of Belgian Dutch (East Flemish and Brabantine) which differ in their vowel realizations. Twenty-four native speakers of Dutch performed two picture-naming tasks and two vowel categorization tasks, in which they heard Standard Dutch or English vowels and were asked to map these onto orthographic representations of Dutch vowels. The results of the Dutch production and categorization tasks revealed that the participants’ L1 regional variety importantly influenced their production and especially perception of vowels in the standard variety of their L1. The two groups also differed in how they assimilated non-native English vowels to native vowel categories, but no major differences could be observed in their productions of non-native vowels. The study therefore only partly confirms earlier studies showing that L1 regional variation may have an influence on the acquisition of non-native language varieties.