Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Perceptual and Production (Re)Training of Allophones and Phonemes in L2 Spanish

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When native speakers of American English begin learning Spanish, their acquisition of native-like pronunciation can be hampered by the tap versus trill distinction in words like CARO 'expensive' and CARRO 'car'. The trill proves difficult because it does not exist in English. The tap exists as an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in English words like 'writer' and 'rider', but English speakers must learn to process it as a phoneme rather than an allophone. Similarly, learners have difficulty acquiring the spirantization of voiced stops, where the /d/ in CODO 'elbow' is produced as a voiced dental fricative, which is more like the 'th' sound in English.This study investigates whether American English-speaking learners of Spanish can be trained to perceive and produce the intervocalic tap, trill, /t/, and /d/ contrasts in Spanish. Participants will be trained using both perceptual and production training methods. Past research has reported that perceptual training alone improves both perception and production and that production training alone improves both as well, but the production training studies have not been limited to production as trainees have been able to listen to the training stimuli. Both training modalities will be systematically controlled in this study so that they can be directly compared. A third training methodology will be introduced that includes both perception and production to discover whether perceptual training, production training, or a combination of the two is most effective. This study will use cross-modal priming and ERP data in addition to traditional tasks (identification and production tasks) to evaluate the effect of training, an innovative use of both tasks to determine if trainees not only perceive and produce the trained L2 contrasts but also if they unconsciously process these contrasts and if they have built new phonemic categories for these sounds.