An Investigation of Language-Specific and Orthographic Effects in L2 Arabic geminate production by Advanced Japanese- and English-speaking learners

Abstract

Research has indicated that second-language learners have difficulty producing geminates accurately. Previous studies have also shown an effect of orthography on second-language speech production. We tested whether the existence of a contrast in the first language phonology for length aids the second-language production of the same contrast. Furthermore, we examined the effect of exposure to orthographic input on geminate consonant production in a cross-script context. We tested the production of Arabic geminate-singleton stop consonants [/bː/-/b/, /tː/-/t/, /dː/-/d/, and /kː/-/k/], a nasal stop consonant /mː/-/m/, and an emphatic stop consonant /tˤː/-/tˤ/, as well as the effect of the diacritic used in Arabic to mark gemination in a delayed imitation task and two reading tasks (ortho-with diacritics and ortho-without diacritics). A comparison of the productions of advanced Japanese-speaking learners, English-speaking learners, and an Arabic control group showed that both learner groups were able to produce Arabic geminate stops; however, the Japanese-speaking learners exhibited an advantage over the English-speaking learners in the auditory-only task and in the presence of diacritics, highlighting the fact that orthographic effects may occur in some cross-script contexts.

Keywords: Arabic; English; Japanese; L2 speech learning; diacritics; geminate; production.

Figure 1.

Examples of the singleton Arabic word kara > /sɑkɑrɑ/ produced by a participant from each speaker group. (a) Arabic control singleton sample. (b) Japanese learner singleton sample. (c) English learner singleton sample.

Figure 2.

Example of the geminated word /sɑkːɑrɑ/. (a) Arabic control geminate sample. (b) Japanese learner geminate sample. (c) English learner geminate sample.

Figure 3.

Pairwise comparisons of singleton and geminate sounds within and across the three study groups for Task 1 “Imitate.”

Figure 4.

Pairwise comparisons of singleton and geminate sounds within and across the three study groups for Task 2 “No-Ortho.”

Figure 5.

Pairwise comparisons of singleton and geminate sounds within and across the three study groups for Task 3 “Ortho.”

Figure 6.

Pairwise comparisons of the three tasks for singleton sounds within and across the three study groups.

Figure 7.

Pairwise comparisons of the three tasks for geminate sounds within and across the three study groups.

Figure 8.

Pairwise comparisons of the mean differences in geminates-singleton duration between Arabic, English, and Japanese groups of speakers.