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ON THE ACQUISITION OF SECOND LANGUAGE TIMING PATTERNS
Author(s) -
Fourakis Marios,
Iverson Gregory K.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1985.tb01086.x
Subject(s) - linguistics , arabic , voice onset time , interlanguage , psychology , duration (music) , interval (graph theory) , articulation (sociology) , second language , second language acquisition , variation (astronomy) , vowel , mathematics , acoustics , philosophy , physics , combinatorics , politics , political science , astrophysics , law
This paper presents the results of an experiment which examined the temporal characteristics of voiceless plosives in American English. Arabic, and Arabic‐accented English. Results showed that the temporal implementation of closure duration and Voice Onset Time delay was different for each of the three groups. surprisingly, however. Arabic‐accented English fell not between the norms established by Arabic and English proper, but rather departed from the target language goal (shorter closures, longer VOT delays) with longer closures and shorter VOT delays than is characteristic of Arabic itself This unusual interlanguage phenomenon can be explained in terms ot the Arabic speakers having learned that English displays a constant voiceless interval (Weismer 1980) among all places of articulation, but having mislearned that the distribution internal to this interval varies according to positional factors.