Phonological remapping in native English speakers

Treball de fi de màster en Lingüística Teòrica i Aplicada. Tutora: Núria Sebastián Gallés.The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of length of residency on native English speakers’ perceptions of speech sounds from their native and second languages. Based on methodology from Barrios et al.’s 2016 study, the present study tested English speakers (with Spanish as a second language) against a Spanish monolingual control group in an AX discrimination task of the phones [d], [ð], and [ɾ]. These sounds occur in both languages, but with different distributions and phonological status. After the discrimination task, and an identification test, results showed that native English speakers’ perceptions of these speech sounds had, in fact, been “remapped” to the phonological distribution found in Spanish, and that the longer the length of residency, the more similarly participants scored to the monolingual Spanish control group. These results confirm findings from previous studies regarding phonological perception and second language learning, and also contribute to the literature about the effects of second languages and immersion on the native language (L1)