The Acquisition of L2 Segmental Contrasts: Investigating Native English Speakers’ Perception of Arabic Pharyngealization Contrasts

Abstract

The current study in this research included three experiments which focused on examining the ability of a group of L2 learners of Arabic to perceive L2 Arabic segmental contrasts. Eight Arabic pharyngealization contrasts /tˁ/-/t/, /ðˁ/-/ð/, /dˁ/-/d/, /sˁ/-/s/ were selected to be examined in the three experiments .To demonstrate, this the present study investigated whether L1 English phonological features (i.e. feature geometry) affect the perception of native English speakers learning Arabic of those contrasts. The members of each pair of those phonemes are distinguished as follows: for the first member of the pair, this is the feature ]RTR[ which is lacking in the English feature geometry . The second member of each pair involves the feature ]coronal[ which exists in the English feature geometry.This investigation follows Brown’s (1998) phonological model’s predictions and data collection methods and it was applied to the first experiment of the present study. The results from an AX discrimination task revealed that Brown’s hypothesis that the perception of Arabic phonemic contrasts is constrained by the phonological features in the English phonology is confirmed. The present study also focused on investigating native English speakers’ reliance on vowel quality in relation to the ease or the difficulty of Arabic pharyngealization contrast perception. The current study chose six Arabic vowels /a/, /i/, /u/ and /ɑ/, /i:/, /u:/ that provided the clearest indication of Arabic pharyngealization contrasts. This investigation follows Hayes-Harb and Durham’s (2016) assumption and methods and it was presented to participants in the second and third experiment of the study. The results from the cross-language vowel identification task confirmed that native English speakers’ discrimination of Arabic contrasts is greatest with unrounded back vowels are /a/-/ ɑ/, followed by /i/, /i:/ and /u/, /u:/ while AXB discrimination task confirmed that vowel quality facilitates Arabic pharyngealization contrast perception among native English speakers.