Speech production processing in the second language.

Abstract

The phenomenon of foreign accent has long been a topic of linguistic theory. Neufeld proposes that speech production, especially at the phonological level, is hampered by the use of (conscious or unconscious) knowledge that speakers have about the L2--metalinguistic knowledge. Those who begin acquiring an L2 after the age of five focus more on structural correctness than younger learners, and tend to use this metalinguistic knowledge more often. Thus even among balanced bilinguals, on an experiment designed to induce focus on form, older learners should perform more speech errors and dysfluencies than native speakers or early bilinguals, and tend to correct more. This pattern should be even more pronounced in learners who have acquired their L2 in a formal (school) context. An experiment consisting of five tasks was designed to test these three points of Neufeld's Pre- and Post-Articulatory Verification (PAV) model. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)