Effects of L1 prosody on segmental contrast in L2: The case of English stop voicing contrast produced by Korean speakers

This study investigated how the L1 phonetics-prosody interface transfers to L2 by examining prosodic strengthening effects (due to prosodic position and focus) on English voicing contrast (bad-pad) as produced by Korean vs English speakers. Under prosodic strengthening, Korean speakers showed a greater F0 difference due to voicing than English speakers, suggesting that their experience with the macroprosodic use of F0 in Korean transfers into L2. Furthermore, Korean speakers produced voiced stops with low F0 and short voice onset time as English speakers did, although such a cue pairing is absent in Korean, showing dissociation of cues from L1 segments for L2 production. (c) 2016 Acoustical Society of AmericaThe authors thank their RAs, Yuna Baek and Jiyoun Jang, for their assistance in acoustic measurements. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (Grant No. NRF-2013S1A2A2035410)