Muertes violentas

Introduction

The field of second-language (L2) phonology attempts to document and explain the pronuncia- tion patterns of non-native learners of a language.1The purpose of this chapter is to describe this area of study through several steps. The first is to locate L2 phonology within the field of second language acquisition (SLA), and, in turn, to relate it to other disciplines. We will then consider a number of specific aspects of L2 phonology, including how it fits into a historical context, what its major findings have been, where the major questions and issues lie, and what kinds of data it seeks to use in order to test empirically the various hypotheses that one can postulate within the field. Finally, the chapter will take up the question of how the results of research on L2 phonology can be brought to bear on language pedagogy, and outline what some of the major questions are that need to be addressed by future research.

Because the field of SLA necessarily impinges on several academic areas, including psychology (SLA entails language contact within an individual), sociology (language contact within a society) and biology (the end state for acquisition seems to be different for older versus younger learners), L2 acquisition is naturally studied from a multidisciplinary perspective. Second-language phonol- ogy, by extension, is also of interest to researchers in several disciplines. Psycholinguistic perspec- tives on L2 phonology are concerned about, for example, the explicit and implicit learning of L2 phonemic categories; sociolinguistic approaches to L2 phonology, on the other hand, are inter- ested is how L2 pronunciation patterns may vary according to social context in which a person is speaking; and from a biological viewpoint, L2 phonologists may investigate the acquisition of L2 sounds and contrasts as a function of age of first exposure to the target language (TL). L2 phonology is also studied from the point of view of phonological theory, placing it squarely within the domain of linguistics. The major distinction in the ways that L2 phonology is approached by the above-mentioned related disciplines, on the one hand, and the way it is investigated through a linguistic approach, on the other, is in the kinds of constructs and principles used to give explanations for the relevant L2 facts. Whereas psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and biological approaches to L2 phonology employ constructs appropriate to their corresponding disciplines, such as short-term memory, prestigious dialect, and critical period hypothesis, respec- tively, linguistic approaches invoke concepts such as, for example, grammar, phoneme, devoicing, and derived environment. For a general discussion of these other perspectives, the reader is referred to the appropriate chapters in this volume. The focus of this chapter will be on a linguistic approach to L2 phonology.

Given this introduction, the remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. The next section places L2 phonology in its historical context by dividing the field into two distinct periods according to the objectives of the research carried out at the time. The section following that addresses several of the major models and approaches to L2 phonology, as well as some of the findings that derive from these different research programs. This is followed by a description of the kinds of studies that have been conducted in order to test the various hypotheses that these approaches have made, which leads naturally to a discussion of the instructional relevance of these findings. The chapter concludes with an outline of some of the important questions remaining to be addressed by future research.

An important caveat at the outset is that our discussion faces limitations of space that will necessarily curtail to some extent our treatment of all of these topics. Where possible the reader is referred to relevant chapters in this, or other volumes, or to the original work itself for more details.

Historical discussion

Although there are a number of ways in which one could structure the discussion of the historical context, we will, for our purposes, divide the study of L2 phonology into two major eras, the first being the time prior to the formulation of the interlanguage (IL) hypothesis, which we will designate as“pre-ILH,” and the second being the period after the postulation of the IL hypothesis, which we term “post-ILH.” The most salient characteristic of the pre-ILH approaches to explaining L2 pronunciation problems is that they focused on only two linguistic systems, the L2 learner’s native language (NL) and TL. We turn first to the discussion of the pre-ILH period, after which we will define the term“interlanguage,” and take up the post-ILH era.

Pre-ILH

The explanation of pronunciation patterns of L2 learners that we label as pre-ILH focused largely on explaining learners’ errors in terms of the differences between the NL and TL, the underlying assumption being that the NL influenced the learning of the TL. The goal of SLA studies in general, and investigations into L2 phonology, in particular, was to explain learning difficulty, which, in turn, led to claims about degree of difficulty, and to the postulation of hierarchies of difficulty.

The best known and most explicit claim that the L2 learner’s NL had a significant role to play in accounting for pronunciation errors dates from the middle of the last century. This work was carried out within the context of the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH), and claimed that NL-TL differences, along with L1 transfer, were paramount in accounting for L2 utterances. During this era, a phonological analysis of a language consisted of a description of the phonemes of that language along with the distribution of the allophones of those phonemes. L2 pronunciation errors were explained in terms of a comparison of the phonemes and their distribution within the respective NL and TL, and although phonemes figured prominently in the predictions of the CAH, a large role was also played by allophones. (See also Pickering, Chapter 20, this volume, for further discussion.) Thus, Lado’s (1957) proposals concerning learning difficulty addressed the question of what constituted maximum phonological difficulty, and allophonic differences between the NL and TL were an important part of his predictions. For him, the greatest difficulty lay in the learner re-categorizing two or more allophones in the NL into different phonemic categories in the TL. An example, the one used by Lado, involved the sounds [d] and [∂], which are allophones of /d/ in Spanish, but which contrast as distinct phonemes in English. Lado claimed that assigning

the allophones [d] and [∂] to separate phonemes in English by a learner whose native language is Spanish constituted maximum learning difficulty.

Important contributions to what constituted maximal learning difficulty in L2 pronunciation within the context of the CAH were made by Stockwell and Bowen (1965) and by Hammerly (1982). Stockwell and Bowen (1965) expanded and refined the predictions of the CAH by comparing the NL and TL in terms of whether any given sound was phonemic, allophonic, or absent in either language. Through these comparisons the authors constructed an eight-level hierarchy of difficulty in which maximum phonological difficulty was ascribed to a learner having to acquire a TL allophone that was absent in the NL. Work by Hammerly (1982) supported empirically some of the claims about learning difficulty made by the CAH and by Stockwell and Bowen’s hierarchy. Hammerly’s analysis showed that, of the six most problematic areas of pronunciation, the top three involved allophones. The greatest difficulty for his subjects was the suppression of NL allophones in pronouncing the TL; the second area of difficulty was producing NL allophones with a different distribution in the TL, including contrastive distribution; and the third most difficult aspect of L2 pronunciation was the production of a TL allophone that did not exist in the NL.

In the research that followed the postulation of the CAH in the ensuing decades, the results were mixed in terms of whether the hypothesis was confirmed. Although there were studies in which the findings were supportive of the CAH, there were many others that reported facts that were counter to the hypothesis, which led to the eventual demise of the CAH. Much of the work in this framework, while setting out to find support for the CAH, actually found that the role of developmental processes, patterns often found in first language acquisition, played a more significant role in the explanation of L2 sound patterns than did NL-TL differences. For example, Johannsson’s (1973) study of 20 L2 learners of Swedish from eight different native-language backgrounds showed that, although some of the errors were predictable by the CAH, others were explainable in terms of articulation ease.

In sum, research within the CAH paradigm from this period showed that, whereas NL influence had a role to play in explaining some aspects of L2 pronunciation, the influence of the NL could not explain all of the facts. It became clear, therefore, that other principles were necessary to explain learning difficulty that could not be directly related to NL-TL differences. Over the decades since that time, numerous proposals have been made to account for facts that are not subsumed under the CAH. These include proposals pertaining to the similarities between the NL and TL, facts about the relationship between production and perception, and principles of markedness, each of which is briefly considered below.

Although the majority of work on L2 pronunciation during this time was done within the principles of the CAH, and attempted to explain L2 phonological difficulty on the basis of differences between the NL and TL, there are also frameworks that base the explanation of pronunciation problems on similarities between the NL and TL. Two such models that incorpo- rate the role of L2 perception are the speech learning model (SLM) developed by Flege (1995), and the perceptual assimilation model (PAM), proposed by Best (1995). Pickering (Chapter 20, this volume) gives an in-depth discussion of Flege’s SLM. For this reason, and because the topic of L2 speech perception is covered in Part IV of this volume, I will not discuss the SLM and PAM any farther here.

A principle that was introduced into SLA theory to help address problems with the CAH was typological markedness, a concept that was pioneered by the Prague School of Linguistics in the theories of Trubetzkoy (1939). The idea behind markedness is that binary oppositions between certain linguistic representations (e.g., voiced and voiceless obstruents, or open and closed syllables) are not simply polar opposites, but that one member of the opposition is assumed to

be privileged in that it has wider distribution, both across languages and within a language. Assigning the term“unmarked” to this privileged member is a way of giving it special status, and indicating that it is considered to be, in some definable way, simpler, more basic, and more natural than the less widely occurring member of the opposition, which is designated as being “marked.” Over the years, the term markedness has taken on a number of different definitions within several distinct approaches to linguistics (see Battistella, 1990 for discussion).

The proposal with respect to L2 phonology was that markedness, as defined in terms of cross- linguistic, implicational generalizations, as in (1) below, would be incorporated into the CAH as a measure of relative difficulty. According to this proposal, any given TL structure would be predicted to be more difficult if it was both different from the corresponding NL structure, and was also more marked than that structure. This claim was explicitly embodied in the markedness differential hypothesis (MDH) stated in Eckman (1977). Whereas the CAH attempted to explain L2 learning difficulty only on the basis of differences between the NL and TL, the claim behind the MDH is that NL-TL differences are necessary for such an explanation, but they are not sufficient, and that therefore one must incorporate into the hypothesis the concept of typological markedness as a measure of relative difficulty.

(1) Typological markedness

A structure X is typologically marked relative to another structure, Y if every language that has X also has Y, but every language that has Y does not necessarily have X. Over the last three decades there have been a number of studies addressing the claims of the MDH, showing that typological markedness is a reliable predictor of difficulty, that there are cases where the directionality of difficulty between the NL and TL involved in a language-contact situation follows the predictions of the MDH, and that the relative degree of difficulty corresponds to the relative degree of markedness (Anderson, 1987; Carlisle, 1992; de Jong et al., 2009).

To sum up this sub-section, we have seen that several proposals have been developed over the years to address some of the perceived shortcomings of the CAH. Thus, it is fair to state that conventional wisdom within the field of L2 phonology is that, although the learner’s NL has a role to play in explaining certain aspects of learning difficulty, NL influence is by no means sufficient to account for L2 pronunciation patterns. Rather, additional principles are necessary.

Post-ILH

Interlanguage. We now address the post-interlanguage hypothesis period of L2 phonology. Interlanguage (IL) is the term given to the mental system developed by L2 learners that enables them to produce and understand utterances of the TL. The idea behind this construct, which has been one of the key developments over the past few decades in SLA theory, in general, and in L2 phonology, in particular, is that L2 learners create their own version of the target language. The motivation for this idea, which was proposed independently by three different scholars (Corder, 1971; Nemser, 1971; Selinker, 1972), is the same as that invoked by a linguist postulating a mental grammar as underlying the ability of a native speaker of any language to speak and understand utterances of that language. Just as the patterns found in the productions of a native speaker of a language are assumed to derive from that speaker’s mental system, so too, the patterns found in the utterances made by non-native speakers of a language are hypothesized to derive from a mental set of rules, viz. the interlanguage system that the learner has acquired.

It is important to note that, in linguistic discussions, the term“grammar” can be used with a systematic ambiguity, on the one hand referring to a description of sentence structure, and on the other hand indicating a mental system that relates meanings and utterances. It is in the latter, more

general sense in which“grammar” includes phonological rules that the word is used in this chapter. Where these phonological rules characterize L2 patterns, the term“interphonology” is often used.

This IL system of the L2 learner must be at least partially different from the learner’s NL grammar, because the L2 utterances produced by the learner of a language are different from that learner’s NL utterances. By the same token, the IL grammar must be different in part from the TL grammar, because the L2 utterances of the learner are distinct from those produced by native speakers of the TL. Thus, a mental grammar that is in at least some respects different from both the NL and the TL must underlie the utterances of the L2 learners. On this view, the process of second language acquisition becomes the construction of a mental system of rules, the interlanguage. And although the acquisition of this IL may be based in part on structures transferred from the NL, and in part on input from the TL, it has also been shown that the IL is, to some extent, independent of both the NL and TL. This is true because studies have shown that some L2 patterns are not part of either the NL or TL.

The strongest argument for the postulation of an IL is an empirical one that requires providing evidence of what is acknowledged to be the most interesting of L2 data, viz., a pattern of utterances that, on the one hand, does not derive from NL transfer, because the NL does not evidence the regularity in question, and on the other hand could not be tied to TL input, because the TL does not exhibit the relevant pattern either. In other words, neither the NL nor the TL can explain the observed L2 patterns, but, as with all regularities, an explanation is required. Therefore, the interlanguage must be hypothesized to explain the observed systematicity.

The value of the construct of an IL is that it has allowed researchers to propose answers to questions that, before this notion was proposed, could not even be asked. Given the concept of IL, not only is it possible, but also reasonable, to raise the question of whether IL grammars are similar in important ways to native language grammars. It is this question which has driven many, if not most, of the research programs in L2 phonology over the last few decades, and on which we will focus in the following sections.

An example of this kind of IL pattern in L2 phonology was reported in Altenberg and Vago (1983) and in Eckman (1981). Altenberg and Vago found that their subjects who were native speakers of Hungarian learning English exhibited the kind of L2 pattern that would motivate a rule of word-final devoicing. What is particularly interesting about this outcome is that neither the phonology of the NL nor that of the TL has a devoicing rule, because both languages have a voice contrast in word-final position. Thus, the IL devoicing rule is independent of both the NL and TL. In the Eckman study, speakers of Spanish produced an IL pattern that motivated a rule of word-final devoicing. This was also a situation where the IL rule was independent of both the NL and TL in that Spanish did not exhibit the kind of evidence necessary to motivate such a rule. What is especially interesting is that the cases of the Hungarian and Spanish learners represent an example of an IL pattern that is not attributable to either NL transfer or TL input, but is attested in other languages of the world, including Catalan, German, Polish, and Russian, to name a few. See also Pickering (Chapter 20, this volume) for discussion of the relationship between the markedness differential hypothesis and the SCH.

To summarize this subsection, the concept of interlanguage led directly to the possibility that L2 patterns could emerge which were independent of both the NL and TL. This develop- ment allowed L2 researchers to question whether IL phonologies were in fact similar in important respects to L1 phonologies.

Constraints on IL grammars. With the postulation of the construct, interlanguage, the goal of SLA theory, and by inclusion, L2 phonology, changed from attempting to explain learning

difficulty in L2 acquisition to the goal of addressing the question of why IL phonologies are the way they are, which is actually a subset of the question,“why is SLA the way it is?” The response that the research programs of this era have given is along these lines:“SLA is the way it is, because IL systems are they way they; and IL systems are as they are, because they are constrained by general, linguistic principles.” In the case of interphonology, the constraints are principles of phonological theory, and within this context, it is also possible for explanations to hark back to the