The Dark /l/ Rises: A Markedness Differential Hypothesis Analysis of the Syllable Position Effect on Japanese Speakers’ Production of the English Dark /l/

This study examined the syllable position effect on the production of English dark /l/ by native Japanese adults who are L2 speakers of English. The Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) by Eckman (1977) states that when a structure is cross-linguistically more marked, it is more challenging for L2 speakers. For example, when a syllable contains consonant clusters, it is more marked than a syllable without consonant clusters. Based on the MDH, it was hypothesized that the production difficulty is higher when the English /l/ is in coda clusters (e.g. “cold”) than when it is in the coda singleton position (e.g. “coal”). Three native Japanese speakers were asked to read a word list containing words with /l/ in different syllable positions (onset clusters, coda clusters, and coda singleton), and fifteen native English speakers rated these productions on a seven-point Likert scale for nativeness. The results were generally consistent with the MDH predictions, with Japanese speakers receiving higher nativeness ratings for words with /l/ in coda singleton than in coda cluster positions. This finding offered support for using markeness-based principles to predict L2 production difficulty based on the syllable position where the target segment occurred