Joselyn Rodriguez, University of Utah
are used to distinguish meaning in a second language (L2). For example, Spanish learners must acquire the /i/-/ ɪ/ contrast to distinguish the words ‘sheep’ and ‘ship’. However, much less work has investigated the acquisition of L2 allophones (variant pronunciations of a contrastive sound which do not distinguish meaning in a language). For example, an English-speaking learner of Spanish must learn that [b] does not sound the same at the beginning of a word as it does between vowels. In the present study, we investigate how L2 allophones are acquired. In particular, we examine whether adult L2 learners can make use of lexical cues from sound-meaning pairings. Participants were exposed to 16 words from an artificial language (8 differing in the sounds [m]-[l] and 8 differing in [b]-[β]). Each word was presented auditorily at the same time as an image depicting its meaning appeared on the computer screen. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two exposure conditions (Same Image and Different Image). Participants in the Different Image group heard auditorily words differing only in the sounds [b] and [β] paired with two distinct images (e.g. [bati] ‘apple’, [βati] ‘penguin’), whereas the Same Image group were exposed to the same auditory words but saw a single image (e.g. [bati] ‘penguin’, [βati] ‘penguin’). At test, participants were shown images and heard an auditory form and had to determine if they matched or mismatched. Taking advantage of the fact that sound contrasts that are used to distinguish word meaning are perceived more readily than sound differences that do not, participants in the Different Image group should perform more accurately at test then those in the Same image group for the [b-β] contrast. A second test examined whether participants’ extend their knowledge about the sounds to a new set of words. Participants were exposed to 6 new words (3 [b] and 3 [β]), but not their similar sounding pair (e.g. they were exposed to [βanu] ‘elephant’, but never heard [banu]). At test, they again decided whether learned auditory stimuli matched pictures. If adult L2 learners do utilize the lexical cues to learn about L2 sounds, then the Different Image group should more readily detect mismatches that contain the [b-β] contrast than the Same Image group.