Production of Vowel Reduction by Mexican Learners of English as L2 and Russian as L3

Maxim Barkov , Fabian Santiago (1) , Teresa Peralta

1 SFL - Structures Formelles du Langage

In thris study, we examined to what extent cross-linguistic influence is observed in the production of unstressed vowels in Mexican learners of L2 English and L3 Russian. Phonological spectral vowel reduction is a widespread process present, in contrast to Spanish, in both English and Russian. In total, 18 Mexican learners, 6 American speakers, 5 Russian speakers and 6 Mexican speakers performed a delayed word repetition task and a sentence completion task. Euclidean distances and temporal values were measured to assess vowel reduction in 1,192 tokens. Mexican learners showed hybrid values of vowel reduction in both foreign languages: while they tended to use quality cues in the case of the L2, they relied on duration cues in the case of the L3. Our results do not show any direct evidence of cross-linguistic influence of temporal values or vowel quality from the L1 or the L2 on the L3. We examine these findings in the light of similar studies and current L3 acquisition models.

Mots clés: multilingualism; vowel reduction; third language acquisition; crosslinguistic influence

Domaines: Linguistique

Maxim Barkov, Fabian Santiago, Teresa Peralta. Production of Vowel Reduction by Mexican Learners of English as L2 and Russian as L3. Canadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique, 2022, 67 (1-2), pp.88-117. ⟨10.1017/cnj.2022.6⟩. ⟨halshs-03312846⟩