Browsing by Subject "Second Language Acquisition"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Acquiring Variable L2 Spanish Intonation in a Study Abroad Context
    (2013-06) Trimble, John
    This dissertation identifies and describes some of the major ways second language (L2) Spanish intonation changes over time in a study abroad context. It focuses on the intonation of two specific utterance types: broad focus declaratives and absolute interrogatives. Additionally, it explores a few important factors in how L2 intonation changes over time, namely: intonational characteristics of learners' first and second languages, task style/formality, and interaction with native Spanish speakers. The methodology employed combines traditional methodological approaches of intonational phonology and second language acquisition to analyze the data of nine English speaking learners of L2 Spanish who spent a semester in the Andes of Venezuela, a region known for its distinct absolute interrogative intonation. The results indicated that the L2 Spanish intonation of most learners was considerably different at the end of the semester abroad. Seven of nine learners adopted a new most frequent intonational pattern for broad focus declaratives. One learner also adopted a new preferred contour for absolute interrogatives. The learners were also dramatically more consistent in their use of particular patterns for each of the two utterance types investigated. A few learners showed evidence of an expanded pitch range. These changes resulted in an interlanguage intonation that was remarkably more like the target language and less like the learners' first language. Additionally, task formality or style was shown to be a significant variable related to variation in L2 Spanish intonation. At the end of the semester, the learners used the target dialect specific absolute interrogative pattern significantly more often in the informal task than they did in the formal one. Finally, native speaker interaction was another variable shown to have a significant effect on the development of target dialect intonational features. The proportion of time the learners reported speaking Spanish and English significantly interacted with change in dialect specific pattern use over time. Moreover, the three learners who showed the most L2 intonational development expressed what appear to be signs of high levels of social integration into the target language community.
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    The Development of Castilian Dialectal Features During a Semester Abroad in Toledo, Spain
    (2013-05) George, Angela
    While students typically are able to increase their proficiency level and increase their use of categorical features while studying abroad, less is known about the development, or lack thereof, over time of variable features. The current study examines the development of three geographically variant features, specific to the dialect of North-Central Castilian Spanish: the informal second person plural form vosotros, the interdental fricative [θ], and the uvular fricative [χ] in 25 adult speakers of English learning Spanish. During a 13-week semester abroad in Central Spain, the participants--all undergraduate majors or minors of Spanish--completed four tasks at the beginning, middle, and end of the semester to elicit the 3 dialectal features. In addition, the learners completed questionnaires about their background, language contact, and attitudes toward Castilian Spanish. To expand on the answers in the questionnaire, the participants completed a semi-structured interview with the researcher. The results showed a significant increase from the beginning to the middle of the semester in the production of vosotros (9% to 18%) and [χ] (9% to 13%), but no significant change from the middle to the end of the semester. On the other hand, the use of [θ] remained about the same throughout the semester, around 7%. The social factors correlated with the increased use of the features were stronger motivation to learn Spanish, less contact with English and fewer weekend trips, more dialectal awareness, and a stronger desire to speak Castilian Spanish. This study adds to the growing amount of research on the acquisition of variable features by learners of Spanish in a study abroad environment. It also examines social and linguistic factors correlated with the use of salient dialectal features. It fills a gap in previous research by examining the relationship between social factors, such as language attitudes, and the production of variable features, as previously noted by Geeslin (2011). Finally, it also provides insight into the acquisition of a dialect in one's second language by study abroad learners.
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    The Interaction Between Word Order and Verb Type in L2 Spanish and L1 English Sentence Processing
    (2020-07) Simonsen, Russell
    This study of second-language (L2) sentence processing responds to the following two questions: (1) Can L2 learners become nativelike processors?; and (2) Is L2 processing influenced by first-language (L1) processing or knowledge? These questions were addressed by examining L2 Spanish speakers’ and L1 English speakers’ sensitivity to the interaction between word order and verb type in self-paced reading (SPR) tasks. The results of two Spanish SPR tasks revealed that beginner and intermediate L2 learners’ sentence processing and accurate interpretation of sentences were influenced primarily by changes in word order, which is non-nativelike behavior. The processing of advanced L2 learners and native Spanish speakers, however, was affected by the interaction between word order and verb type. Word order as an isolated variable seems to affect sentence processing less as Spanish proficiency increases. An English sentence completion task and an English SPR task demonstrated that there is an interaction between word order and verb type that resembles the one in Spanish. Overall, the results suggest that L2 Spanish learners can perform similar to native speakers when processing sentences with variable word order and verb type. Also, because there is more crosslinguistic similarity between English and Spanish at the intersection of word order and verb type than previously thought, claims that L1 English is a source of negative language transfer or that L1 English knowledge cannot aide in the L2 acquisition of Spanish should be made with more hesitation.
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    The L2 Acquisition of Buenos Aires Spanish Intonation During a Study Abroad Semester
    (2014-05) Thornberry, Philip
    The present longitudinal study describes and categorizes the primary changes in L2 Spanish intonation over time by 11 learners studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina for one academic semester. Via the autosegmental metrical model of analysis, this dissertation classifies intonational contours for absolute interrogatives and declarative statements at the beginning and end of the semester in a variety of speech styles. It also isolates extralinguistic factors, such as attitudes and degree of social interaction, that promote or hinder acquisition of Spanish intonational norms. Results show that learner absolute interrogative intonation is considerably different from that of their native Buenos Aires Spanish-speaking peers. At the beginning of the semester, the learner contour is classified as L*+H L* H%, which is marked by a final rising F0 movement. This contrasts with the native Buenos Aires Spanish preference L+H* L+¡H* L%, which is most notable for a final falling F0 contour. By the end of the semester, 9 of the 11 learners continue to produce the non-native-like rising intonation in all speech contexts. However, two learners--Eve and Samantha--begin to approximate native norms by producing an interrogative contour characterized here as L*+H L*+H L% in all speech contexts. The learner declarative contour changes very little over time, regardless of speech context. It is analyzed as L*+H L* L%. All 11 learners produce this contour at the beginning and end of the semester. However, Eve and Samantha periodically demonstrate a handful of native-like declarative intonational characteristics when speaking in the informal speech contexts, such as the long fall melody (Kaisse, 2001), early prenuclear peak alignment, and low phrase tones. The analysis of extralinguistic factors reveals that the learners developed generally favorable attitudes towards porteños, which might promote acquisition of native intonational norms. However, learner exposure to the target language was limited by sporadic and superficial interaction with native speakers. Eve and Samantha, the learners who evidenced the most change in intonation over time, stood out from the rest of the learners by developing more robust, supportive relationships with native Spanish-speaking contacts.
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    L2 acquisition of Spanish allophonic and Italian phonemic contrasts
    (2017-05) Mirisis, Christina
    Although Spanish and Italian voiced stops are similar in articulatory (place of articulation) and acoustic (prevoicing) terms, there are important contrasts associated with these sounds in each language that may affect second language (L2) learners’ acquisition. Spanish maintains an allophonic alternation between word-initial voiced stops and intervocalic voiced approximants, which involves a variation in manner of articulation. Italian maintains a phonemic contrast between intervocalic voiced singleton and geminate stops, which involves a variation in duration. Given these differences, the present study investigates whether the sounds associated with the allophonic alternation in Spanish or those associated with the phonemic contrast in Italian are acquired more easily by L2 learners of each language who share the same L1 (American English) via production and perception tasks. Students enrolled in first-, third-, and fourth-year courses, at the same university, in their respective L2 of Spanish or Italian were recruited for the study. 23 L2 Spanish learners, 20 L2 Italian learners, and five native speakers each of Spanish and Italian participated in the study. Production was assessed with a reading task, while perception was assessed with discrimination and identification tests. The results of the acoustic analyses indicate that learners struggle to produce target sounds in a target-like fashion, as L2 Spanish learners produced word-initial [b d g] with significantly less prevoicing than native speakers and they infrequently produced target approximants as such. L2 Italian learners struggled to precisely implement the phonetic cues that distinguish geminate stops from their singleton counterparts (e.g., preceding vowel duration and consonant duration). In addition, correlation analyses revealed that L2 Spanish and L2 Italian learners’ production and perception are related, although not strongly. Therefore, it is possible that learners’ production difficulties have a perceptual basis, as L2 Spanish learners struggled to discriminate voiced approximants from voiced stops and L2 Italian learners struggled to identify the length difference between voiced singleton and geminate stops. This finding constitutes a valuable contribution to L2 Spanish and L2 Italian phonology, as the role of perception as a basis for learners’ production difficulty of these target sounds has been understudied and not well-understood.
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    The Longitudinal Development of Oral Linguistic Complexity and Accuracy of Spanish Learner Language in Second-Year University Students
    (2015-09) Bajuniemi, Abby
    To date, few studies have investigated the production of linguistic complexity and accuracy with naturalistic data. Very often, the data are obtained in a laboratory or laboratory-style settings, with tasks defined by the researcher rather than the instructor (Hatch, 1978; Seedhouse, 2004). Additionally, replicability of studies that investigate the production of complexity, accuracy, and/or fluency (CAF) has been made difficult by the myriad ways that researchers have operationalized the constructs in their research (c.f. Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005; Housen & Kuiken, 2009; Housen, Kuiken, & Vedder, 2012; Norris & Ortega, 2009; Pallotti, 2009). Further, few studies use a Dynamic Systems Theory lens when researching CAF and the development of CAF. The current longitudinal case study investigates how task affects the production of linguistic complexity and accuracy by three intermediate students of Spanish using data collected in the participants’ regular classrooms over one academic year. A DST framework is used to reflect upon each student’s developmental trajectory over the course of the study. The data were transcribed and separated into AS-units, and then further coded using two global syntactic complexity measures and one specific syntactic complexity measure, and one global accuracy measure as well as one specific accuracy measure. In order to determine task effects, ANOVAs were performed on each student’s data. A multi-level mixed effects model was used to determine whether there were any interactions between time and task type. Results of the ANOVAs showed that task affects each student’s production in a slightly different way, while the multi-level mixed effects modeling showed that verbal accuracy alone showed an interaction between time and task type. Results of the longitudinal analysis of the oral production of linguistic complexity and accuracy using a DST lens showed that the students’ production did vary over time and that each student followed her or his own trajectory over the course of an academic year. These results also showed that there were some trade-off effects with the measures of linguistic complexity and accuracy, in that when complexity measures increased, there was a tendency for accuracy measures to decrease.
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    The Social Networks: Characterizing L2 Spanish Proficiency Development in Study Abroad through Social Network Analysis
    (2020-06) Strawbridge, Arthur
    This study examines the social network development of L2 Spanish learners over the course of an academic semester spent studying abroad in Spain. Social network analysis has been utilized widely in sociological research to understand and predict a range of human behaviors, and has also been applied to research in sociolinguistics (Milroy, 1980) and second language acquisition (SLA) (e.g., Baker-Smemoe et al., 2014; Isabelli-García, 2006; Mitchell et al., 2017). The present investigation proposes to utilize this level of analysis to identify patterns in university sojourners’ social experience, to describe the relationship between these patterns and L2 Spanish proficiency development, and to contextualize these findings within the landscape of contemporary U.S. study abroad practice. HASH(0x41e8010) Data for this investigation were collected from 43 L2 Spanish learners who were university students enrolled in various institutions in the U.S., and who spent the spring 2019 academic semester studying abroad in Spain. Students were recruited from six study abroad programs located in four cities in Spain (Granada, Madrid, Sevilla, Toledo). Social network data were collected via a specially designed social network questionnaire, while linguistic data were collected via the administration of two Spanish language proficiency tests, a Diploma de Español como Lengua Extranjera (DELE) exam and an elicited imitation task (EIT) (Ortega, Iwashita, Norris, & Rabie, 1999). Data collection was performed at the beginning and end of the participants’ sojourn in Spain, a period of time lasting approximately 12 weeks. HASH(0x41dc1d8) The results of this study identify four prominent social network patterns exhibited by students during their time abroad, characterized by varying levels of Spanish language use, emotional proximity to contacts, frequency of interaction, contact nationality, and network cohesion. These patterns exert a significant influence on learners’ gains in Spanish proficiency, with the most powerful influences on proficiency gains being the development of Spanish language-dominant social networks with NNS program peers, as well as the development of high numbers of integrated NS/NNS social groups. These findings are discussed in the context of the current state of U.S. study abroad programming.