Intervocalic Rhotic Pronunciation byAdult Learners of Spanish as a Second Language

The amount of work on the second language acquisition of Spanish phonology is relatively small in comparison to other areas of Spanish second language acquisition. Of the work on the second language acquisition of Spanish phonology, much focuses on the non-linguistic factors that influence pronunciation as a whole (i.e., without focusing on particular sounds or features in that pronunciation; e.g., Elliott 1995a, Reeder 1997, Simões 1996) or on the effects of instruction on progress toward a native-like pronunciation (e.g., Castino 1992, Elliott 1995a, 1995b, 1997, González-Bueno 1997). Work that has focused on the acquisition of specific Spanish sounds has shared a couple of characteristics. First, studies have tended to cluster around certain types of sounds and issues. Certainly the most studied sounds are the voiceless stops (e.g., González-Bueno 1997, Nathan 1987, Reeder 1997, Zampini 1994, 1998), where much attention has been paid to the fact that the same phonological stops, /p,t,k/, exist in both Spanish and English, but with the considerable phonetic difference that voice onset times are much shorter in Spanish than in English. Another characteristic of studies that have focused on the second language acquisition of particular Spanish sounds is that often there is a focus on how non-linguistic factors (e.g., context of learning, field dependence/independence, age, attitude) lead to improvement in the pronunciation of particular sounds (e.g., Díaz-Campos 2004, Elliott 1995a, 1995b, 1997, Rosenman 1987). Finally, a third characteristic of studies on the acquisition of particular Spanish sounds is that many studies tend to consider accuracy in achieving the target sound, and in some cases improvement in accuracy, but not the development of pronunciation en route to consistent accuracy. That is, even those studies that examine improvement in the pronunciation of particular Spanish sounds often consider only the increase in accuracy in achieving the target over time without considering the changes in error types and what such development might tell us about the acquisition process. The present study diverges from each of the three common characteristics mentioned above for studies on the second language acquisition of specific Spanish sounds. First, by considering the pronunciation of rhotics, I examine sounds that have received considerably less attention in studies of Spanish second language phonology than have other sounds. Second, rather than look at the effects of non-linguistic factors on the pronunciation of intervocalic rhotics, I consider the effects of level of proficiency in the second language (though certainly other studies have included this as well) in order to provide a cross-sectional view of development in the production of these sounds. Lastly, while the present study certainly considers the increase in accuracy of producing the target sounds across proficiency levels, of just as much interest are the non-target productions in order to gain insight into the developmental process of learners in acquiring the Spanish rhotics. The present study investigates the acquisition of Spanish rhotic pronunciation by speakers of American English, and therefore it is pertinent to briefly consider the rhotic systems of these two languages. American English has a voiced alveolar approximant [] that varies in the details of the specific articulation, being retroflex for some speakers and not for others, being truly alveolar in articulation for some speakers while post-alveolar for others, having varying degrees of lip rounding,