Coarticulation in Second Language Spanish: Learning to Connect Sounds in a Second Language

Because of the continuous nature of speech, productions of discrete sounds often overlap. This overlap, called coarticulation, occurs cross-linguistically. As coarticulation differs between languages, it must be learned as a part of second language phonological acquisition. However, there is not much research on coarticulation in second languages. In this paper, I examine coarticulation in a second language context. Students in a Spanish pronunciation class recorded themselves reading a word list in both English and Spanish. Their productions are analyzed for degree of overlap between voiceless stops (/p, t, k/) and vowels. I look particularly at differences between English and Spanish, differences over the course of the semester, and differences based on voice onset time. I also evaluate two models of coarticulation: the feature-spreading model and the degree of articulatory constraint model. Each of these models make separate predictions about the coarticulatory patterns that will be observed. Results show that English demonstrates a higher degree of stop-vowel coarticulation than Spanish. There is no difference between the beginning of the semester and the end of the semester in either language. Additionally, a longer voice onset time correlates with a higher degree of coarticulation. The specific pattern of the stop-vowel overlap fits more with the degree of coarticulatory constraint model. Overall, this study finds cross-linguistic differences in coarticulation, even in a second language context.No embargoAcademic Major: Linguistic