Ling-001-601 Homework 2

Ling-001-601, Fall 2007

Homework 2, due September 20 at the beginning of class.

Part 1. For this exercise you will be thinking about some of the issues that arise in learning a second language in adulthood or late childhood. In particular, you'll be trying to identify and describe, using some of the new terms and concepts you have learned, some of the phonetic and phonological factors that contribute to giving a second-language learner a characteristic 'accent.'

You can pick one of the two following types of scenarios:

A case where you tried to learn a foreign language after early childhood and encountered problems in reproducing certain sounds, or in producing them in the correct contexts.
A case where you observed a speaker of another language trying to learn your native language and having the same kinds of difficulties with pronunciation.

For either case, you should be familiar enough with both languages to be able to identify the sounds in question and produce examples of words that contain them.

Remember: for this assignment you're thinking specifically about sounds and how they're organized - don't discuss second-language learning problems related to syntax, morphology, etc. Also, try to think of examples that involve segments (consonants and vowels) rather than non-segmental phenomena like stress and intonation, which we haven't covered yet. (If you suspect that your example has to do with syllable structure, you can read to the end of this week's handout to learn the terminology you'll need to discuss it.)

After you've picked a test case and identified what might be going on, write 1-2 paragraphs where you:

State the names of both languages and give a brief description of the scenario (which was the speaker's native language and which was being learned, age of speaker, formality of instruction, level of proficiency reached, etc.).
Describe as precisely as possible the feature that identified the speaker's accent as non-native. Examples of such features could be inappropriate voicing or de-voicing of some consonant(s), aspiration or non-aspiration, substitution of a lateral liquid for a retroflex, changing fricatives to stops, failing to reproduce a particular vowel sound, merging two vowels that are phonemically distinct
State whether this feature of the learner's pronunciation is context-sensitive or context-free. In other words, do they do it every time they encounter the relevant sound(s), or only when the sound(s) are surrounded by other sounds of a particular type? Give examples of words (in IPA transcription) to support your answer. If the feature is context-sensitive, try to identify the context.
Explain, as well as you can, why the speaker had this particular difficulty. Is it because their native language simply lacks a sound that exists in the target language? Or are they capable of producing both sounds, but not used to thinking of them as separate phonemes? Or is it because they're automatically applying a rule from their native language phonology (as we saw with English diphthongization and aspiration in Spanish queso)? Again, give examples that support your answer. You may want to include (partial) vowel or consonant charts to illustrate cases where one language is missing phonemes that another language has.

Part II. Do questions 1 and 2 on p. 121 of this week's reading. A few points:

In the data for question 1, the symbol /q/ stands for a voiceless uvular stop (refer to the full IPA chart from this week's handout).
In question 1-ii, the figures they're referring to are basically the same as the vowel chart from p. 7 of the Week 1 handout.
In question 1-iv, 'State their distribution in words' just means 'state the contexts where each sound (or segment) appears.'
Similarly for question 2-i: 'list the conditioning environments' means 'list the contexts where each segment appears.'