Intervocalic tap and trill production in the acquisition of Spanish as a second language

• Marda Rose ^[1]
  1. [1] I
• Localización: Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, ISSN-e 2199-3386, ISSN 1939-0238, Vol. 3, Nº. 2, 2010, págs. 379-420
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Research on tap and trill acquisition by learners and native speakers of Spanish has analyzed production in phonological tap and trill environments separately, which makes it difficult to ascertain whether learners differentiate their production or if the same sound is producedin both environments. Therefore, the current study investigates individual speaker production to determine if learners produce contrasting sounds in phonological tap and trill environments and defines the developmental stages that occur as learners begin to differentiate between taps and trills. Thirty participants completed a narrative task: 24 learners and six native speakers. Results suggest learners pass through five stages before they differentiate between both environments. This process involves learning to tap followed by learning to associate frication (i.e. trill, tap+, and assibilated variants) with the phonological trill environment.