Second language (L2) phonological acquisition involves learning novel target-language sounds, variable forms of sounds that arise in different phonological contexts, and any phonotactic constraints that govern their appearance. Interlanguage (IL) grammars must adapt to represent sounds and constraints that are novel to the native language (L1)…

In the past century, French has shifted from being the native language of many Louisianans to being an endangered dialect. Since the creation of the state agency CODOFIL (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) in the 1960's, efforts have been made to revitalize French in Louisiana, and since the 1980's, some parishes have offered…

This dissertation explores the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by speakers of non-tonal languages within the framework of Optimality Theory. The effects of three L1s are analyzed: American English, a stress-accent language; Tokyo Japanese, a lexical pitch accent language; and Seoul Korean, a non-stress and non-pitch accent…

This review article evaluates the intersection of the content of two recent anthologies in second language (L2) phonology. One of the books lays out both the methodological context and theoretical underpinnings of the field, whereas the other volume reports 11 empirical studies on the L2 acquisition of several aspects of pronunciation by adult…

Reviews Tesar and Smolensky's, "Learnability in Optimality Theory" (2000). Discusses the main tenets of the book as well as the different topics included in each chapter. (Author/VWL)

Research assumptions and procedures of two studies of interlanguage (IL) phonology are examined and criticized. In both studies, syllable structure is used as a primary variable, but opposing claims are made about "open" and "closed" IL syllable structure preference. It is argues that: (1) neither IL study considers sufficiently the phonetic…

The natural phonology theory, related to European structuralism, makes two fundamental assumptions: (1) phonemes are mental images of the sounds of language, and (2) phonological processes represent subconscious mental substitutions of one sound or class of sounds for another that are the natural response to the relative difficulties of sound…

Suggests that second language research could provide answers to questions concerning the structure of first language grammars that cannot be answered by only examining first language data and intuitions. Examines homophony in phonology and morphology. (Author/VWL)

Reviews research in second language acquisition that has examined the influence of syllable structure universals on the structuring of interlanguage phonology. (Author/VWL)

This article surveys the development of second language (L2) phonology over the last 40-50 years. Research in this area has grown from analyzing learners' errors in terms of Contrastive Analysis to proposals explaining L2 sound patterns in terms of constraints on interlanguage grammar. Although native language transfer has endured as one source of…

Examines three experimental studies deriving from contrastive analysis predictions and error analysis insights into deviances from expected target language forms. Each of these studies predate the Interlanguage hypothesis. (CB)

This study deals with the development and recoverability of word-final codas in Chinese-Swedish interlanguage. The relation between consonant deletion and vowel epenthesis is investigated from both a developmental perspective and a grammatical-functional one. Longitudinal, conversational data from three Chinese beginner learners of Swedish were…

A study investigated whether markedness relationships within a target language influence the degree of difficulty in acquisition. The Intralingual Markedness Hypothesis was developed, stating that if structures in the target language differ from those in the native language, and if those structures in the target language are in a markedness…

A study investigated patterns in phonological errors occurring in the speaker's second language in both formal and informal speaking situations. Subjects were three adult learners of English as a second language, including a native Spanish-speaker and two Asians. Their speech was recorded during diagnostic testing (formal speech) and in everyday…

This paper reports on a small-scale pilot study further investigating the perceptual development in the acquisition of durational contrasts by different levels of adult English-speakers of Japanese. Four kinds of naturally spoken word-tokens were edited by a synthesizer to generate word-stimuli varying the duration of a certain consonant/vowel…