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This study examined Japanese speakers' learning of American English during their first years of immersion in the United States (U.S.). Native Japanese-speaking (NJ) children (n=16) and adults (n=16) were tested on two occasions, averaging 0.5 (T1) and 1.6 years (T2) after arrival in the U.S. Age-matched groups of native English-speaking children (n=16) and adults (n=16) also participated. The NJ adults' scores for segmental perception and production were higher than the NJ children's at T1. The NJ children's foreign accent scores and pronunciation of English fricatives improved significantly between T1 and T2, whereas the NJ adults' scores did not. These findings suggest that adults may have an advantage over children initially but that children may improve in production more quickly than adults when immersed in an L2-speaking environment. (Contains 5 tables, 1 figure and 7 footnotes.)

The production of unstressed vowels in English by early and late Korean- and Japanese-English bilinguals was investigated. All groups were nativelike in having a lower fundamental frequency for unstressed as opposed to stressed vowels. Both Korean groups made less of an intensity difference between unstressed and stressed vowels than the native speakers (NSs) of English as well as less of a difference in duration between the two types of vowel than the NSs. The Japanese speakers, whose native language has a phonemic length distinction, produced more nativelike durational patterns. Finally, the vowel quality (first and second formant frequencies) of unstressed vowels was different from the NS group's for the late bilinguals, for whom unstressed vowels were widely dispersed in the vowel space according to their orthographic representations, and from the early Korean bilinguals, who substituted the Korean high central vowel. The results are discussed in terms of the effect of the phonological status of first language phonetic features and age of acquisition.

The effects of age of acquisition and native language prosody on the acquisition of English stress patterns were investigated with early and late Korean-English bilinguals (n = 20). Distributional patterns of stress placement based on syllabic structure, distributional patterns of stress placement based on lexical class, and stress patterns of phonologically similar words were investigated for their effect on the placement of stress in English nonwords. Both bilingual groups--like the native English controls--showed extension of stress patterns from phonologically similar real words. The effect of syllabic structure for early bilinguals was slightly different from that of native speakers, and late bilinguals showed more reduced effects. Unlike previous work with Spanish-English bilinguals, Korean-English bilinguals demonstrated a nonnativelike effect of lexical class, most pronounced in the late bilinguals. This difference might be due to Koreans' low sensitivity to word-level statistical distributions because of early exposure to a phrase-level prosodic system.

Guion, Clark, Harada and Wayland (2003) found that three factors affect English speakers' stress placement on bisyllabic non-words: syllabic structure, lexical class and stress patterns of phonologically similar real words. The current replication and extension included three groups (N = 30): native English speakers, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and late Spanish-English bilinguals. Participants produced and gave perceptual judgments on 40 non-words of varying syllabic structures in noun and verb sentence frames. A regression analysis used the three factors to predict stress placement in production and perception. All three groups showed significant effects from stress patterns of phonologically similar real words and lexical class. The effect of syllabic structure for early bilinguals was slightly different from that of native speakers and late bilinguals showed greatly reduced effects. Late bilinguals exhibited more initial stress overall, possibly due to L1 transfer. These results run counter to the prediction made by Long (1990) about age effects on phonological acquisition.

The ability of native English (NE) and native Chinese (NC) speakers to identify and discriminate the mid-versus the lowtone contrast in Thai was investigated before and after auditory training. The variables under investigation were first language background and the interstimulus interval (ISI) of the presentation (500 ms vs. 1500 ms). The NC group outperformed the NE group in its ability to discriminate the two Thai tones under the ISI 500 ms condition before training and under both ISI conditions after training. A significant improvement in identification from the pretest to the posttest was observed in the NC group under both ISI conditions, but not in the NE group. These results suggest that prior experience with the tone system in one tone language may be transferable to the perception of tone in another language.

Seventeen native English speakers participated in an investigation of language users' knowledge of English main stress patterns. First, they produced 40 two-syllable nonwords of varying syllabic structure as nouns and verbs. Second, they indicated their preference for first or second syllable stress of the same words in a perception task. Finally, they indicated words they considered to be phonologically similar to the nonwords. Analyses of variance on the production and perception data indicated that both syllabic structure and lexical class (noun or verb) had an effect on main stress assignment. In logistic regression analyses on the production and perception responses, predictions of stress placement made by (1) syllable structure, (2) lexical class, and (3) stress patterns of phonologically similar words all contributed significantly and uniquely to the prediction of main stress assignment. The results indicate that phonological theories of English word stress need to allow for multiple, competing, probabilistic factors in accounts of main stress placement including syllabic structure (most notably vowel length), lexical class, and stress patterns of phonologically similar words. (Contains 3 tables, 2 figures and 7 footnotes.)

Examined whether second language (L2) utterance durations increase as age of learning increases. Fluently produced English sentences spoken by 240 native speakers of both Italian and Korean were examined. Results give preliminary support for the proposal that the more established the first language during exposure to the second language, the more it will interfere with L2 production. (Author/VWL)

Abstract Seventeen native English speakers participated in an investigation of language users' knowledge of English main stress patterns. First, they produced 40 two-syllable nonwords of varying syllabic structure as nouns [...]

The proposal that phonological contrast is enhanced through greater approximation of phonetic targets was investigated by comparing clear speech to conversational and citation-form speech produced by Korean speakers. The stop system of Korean is undergoing a sound change in which younger speakers produce the aspirated-lenis stop contrast differently from previous generations. Older speakers differentiate this contrast primarily with the acoustic correlate of voice onset time (VOT) and secondarily with F0. Younger speakers are merging VOT values for this contrast. As a result, the primary acoustic correlate is now F0 for younger speakers. These production differences likely indicate that younger speakers have developed different phonetic targets for stop production. These different phonetic targets were predicted to result in different enhancement patterns in clear speech: Younger speakers were predicted to enhance F0 differences, whereas older speakers were predicted to enhance VOT differences in clear speech. Results indicated that the older group solely used VOT to enhance the contrast in clear speech, whereas the younger group primarily used F0 but also demonstrated small VOT enhancement. These results indicate that clear speech enhancement strategies reflect phonetic targets. Older and younger speakers have different F0 and VOT targets and these different targets conditioned different enhancement strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interaction of Korean and English stop systems in Korean-English bilinguals as a function of age of acquisition (AOA) of English was investigated. It was hypothesized that early bilinguals (mean AOA=3.8 years) would more likely be native-like in production of English and Korean stops and maintain greater independence between Korean and English stop systems than late bilinguals (mean AOA=21.4 years). Production of Korean and English stops was analyzed in terms of three acoustic-phonetic properties: voice-onset time, amplitude difference between the first two harmonics, and fundamental frequency. Late bilinguals were different from English monolinguals for English voiceless and voiced stops in all three properties. As for Korean stops, late bilinguals were different from Korean monolinguals for fortis stops in voice-onset time. Early bilinguals were not different from the monolinguals of either language. Considering the independence of the two stop systems, late bilinguals seem to have merged English voiceless and Korean aspirated stops and produced English voiced stops with similarities to both Korean fortis and lenis stops, whereas early bilinguals produced five distinct stop types. Thus, the early bilinguals seem to have two independent stop systems, whereas the late bilinguals likely have a merged Korean-English system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stop systems of adult Korean (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals were studied through acoustic analysis of Korean and English stop productions. The interaction of the first and second language stop systems was investigated as a function of age of exposure to English. The main goals of the investigation were to examine the extent to which early and the late bilinguals produced a given stop category in a native-like way and the extent to which the two stop systems were held independent from each other in the phonological systems of the bilinguals. Two specific questions were asked: whether early bilinguals were more native-like in the production of English stops and thus were more likely to establish L2 phonetic categories than late bilinguals, and whether the Early bilinguals maintain a greater extent of independence between the Korean and English stop systems than the late bilinguals. For this purpose, productions of Korean and English stops were analyzed in terms of three acoustic-phonetic properties, VOT, H1-H2, and f0. The results suggested that fine-grained phonetic information is crucial to investigation of bilingual phonological systems and they were discussed in terms of the role of perceived phonetic distance between L1 and L2 phonetic categories in L2 speech learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]