Spontaneous acquisition of pronunciation of selected segmental elements in Spanish, by native speakers of Polish. A case study Cover Image

Spontaniczne nabywanie umiejętności wymowy wybranych elementów segmentalnych w języku hiszpańskim przez rodowitych użytkowników języka polskiego
Spontaneous acquisition of pronunciation of selected segmental elements in Spanish, by native speakers of Polish. A case study

Author(s): Tomasz Sobański
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies
Published by: KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA Sp. z o.o.
Keywords: Spanish; phonetics; phoneme; spontaneous acquisition of pronunciation

Summary/Abstract: A contrastive analysis of the phonology and phonetics of the native and a foreign tongue cannot foresee all pronunciation errors in the foreign language; their character needs to be established experimentally. The goal of this paper is to determine whether subjects can spontaneously acquire the pronunciation of selected sounds of Spanish, and whether the form of the stimulus (written vs. oral) influences the phonetic correctness of the result. The experiment was conducted on two students. The corpus was made up by an oral statement (reading of a series of sentences), and free answers to oral questions. The results show that correct pronunciation occurs when sounds are identical in both languages, and to a certain degree, when L2 sounds are absent from L1. Errors arise when sounds are similar but not identical in L1 and L2. The correctness of realization increases during free speech, and the increase is independent from the skill level of the subject.

  • Issue Year: 2015
  • Issue No: 19
  • Page Range: 301-313
  • Page Count: 13