Perception and production of word-final alveolar stops by brazilian portuguese learners of English

This paper focuses on the perception and production of the English alveolar stops (/t/ and /d/) in syllable coda by Brazilian learners of English. In the production test, the participants read a list of English sentences containing alveolar stops in word-final position. The preceding and following phonological contexts were controlled, so that the effect of context on the production of the alveolar stops could be analyzed. The perception test consisted of an oddity discrimination task where the target obstruents were either unreleased, aspirated, palatalized or produced with a paragogic vowel. The results of the production investigation show that the learners tended to unrelease the obstruents, but several tokens were aspirated, palatalized or produced with a paragogic vowel. As regards the relationship between perception and production of word-final /t/ and /d/, a positive correlation was found between the discrimination and production rates. Index Terms: L2 perception/production, alveolar stops, coda.

[1]  Steven H. Weinberger,et al.  Interlanguage phonology : the acquisition of a second language sound system , 1987 .

[2]  Rosane Silveira The influence of pronunciation instruction on the perception and production of english word-final consonants , 2004 .

[3]  Melissa Bettoni-Techio Production of final alveolar stops in brazilian portuguese/english interphonology , 2005 .

[4]  Rosana Denise Koerich Perception and production of word-final vowel epenthesis by brazilian EFL students , 2002 .

[5]  Rosana Denise Koerich Perception and production of vowel paragoge by Brazilian EFL students , 2006 .

[6]  Barbara O. Baptista,et al.  The influence of voicing and sonority relationships on the production of English final consonants , 2006 .

[7]  Eleonora Cavalcante Albano,et al.  O gesto e suas bordas: Esboco de fonologia acustico-articulatoria do portugues brasileiro , 2002 .

[8]  Paul Boersma,et al.  Linguistic Perception and second language acquisition , 2004 .

[9]  Barbara O. Baptista,et al.  English with a Latin beat : studies in Portuguese/Spanish-English interphonology , 2006 .

[10]  B. Spolsky Conditions for Second Language Learning , 1989 .

[11]  Thaïs Cristófaro Silva,et al.  Fonética e fonologia do português : roteiro de estudos e guia de exercícios , 1998 .

[12]  Elizabeth C. Zsiga Phonetic alignment constraints: consonant overlap and palatalization in English and Russian , 2000, J. Phonetics.

[13]  W. Strange Speech perception and linguistic experience : issues in cross-language research , 1995 .

[14]  E. Tarone,et al.  Some Influences on the Syllable Structure of Interlanguage Phonology. , 1980 .

[15]  Eleonora Cavalcante Albano O Português brasileiro e as controvérsias da fonética atual: pelo aperfeiçoamento da Fonologia Articulatória , 1999 .

[16]  C. Best A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception , 1995 .

[17]  R. Fox,et al.  Auditory and categorical effects on cross-language vowel perception. , 1994, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[18]  J. Flege Second Language Speech Learning Theory , Findings , and Problems , 2006 .