L1 influence on the L2 acquisition of English word-final nasal place contrasts: An electropalatographic study of L1 Japanese and Spanish learners
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Languages differ in the extent to which phonologicalcontrasts observed in onsets are neutralized syllable finally. We examined theacquisition of English syllable-final /m n ŋ/ by L2 learners whose L1 nasalcodas lack independent place (Japanese) or neutralize to a single place(Spanish). Three learning outcomes were hypothesized, based on whetherlearners’ production is shaped mainly by coda complexity, perception of thecontrast or L1 dialectal realizations. Data from three reading tasks collectedfrom six learners (three of each L1) and two English-speaking controls wereexamined using electropalatography (EPG). Linguopalatal contact patterns wereanalyzed quantitatively and qualitatively (presence, absence, and degree ofalveolar and velar closures). While difficulty in realizing place contrasts wasobserved with all L2 speakers, contrary to our hypothesis, the L1 Spanishspeakers were less accurate than their Japanese-speaking peers, particularly inthe production of word-final prevocalic /ŋ/ for which a high rate ofneutralization to /n/ was witnessed. However, the Japanese learners’ greaterapparent accuracy was due to the presence of non-target final devoicedepenthetic vowels and/or stop-like releases. Overall, the results provideinsights into developmental stages in the acquisition of new positionalcontrasts, including evidence for first language and even idiolectal influence,and highlight the difficulty of blocking L1 neutralization processes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".