Perception and production of syllable structure and stress by adult Libyan Arabic speaker acquiring English in the UK

Abstract

The field of second language (L2) phonology has recently addressed the related phonological acquisition question of to what extent exposure to native speaker L2 input following exposure to non-native accented L2 input, results in c~anges in the leamer's interlanguage phonology (Akita 2001). If such learners do show changes over time, what kind of changes are these in both perception and production? My study is a contribution to interlanguage studies on the acquisition of prosodic structure, and concentrates on the acquisition of English syllable structure and metrical stress by Arabic speaker. In this study the interlanguage phonology of 28 native Arabic speakers from Libya learning English in natural settings (The UK), was investigated. The average age of the participants was 32.5 years. All the subjects started learning English in school at an average age of 16.0 years. The primary source oflanguage input was the classroom, till an average age of25.0 years. The method of collecting data involved three types of test. The first test covered syllable structure in onset and coda with epenthesised forms and included 185 words. The second test covered metrical stress, and included two sub-tests. Test 2A included 28 words, and test 2B included 84 sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical forms of stress. The third test contained three sub-tests. Test 3A included 9 words, test 3B included four pictures, and test 3C included 28 sentences. Tests cover perception of syllable structure and metrical stress as well as production of syllable structure and metrical stress for each learner. In the perception test learners had to listen to a type and chose an answer from a paper in front of them whereas for production tests learners had to read words, sentences, and talk about pictures. Their production output was recorded and transcribed. Results show differences for the perception and production sub-tasks. There is also some parameter resetting and missetting at the level of metrical stress. These results mirror the findings of Archibald (1993) Pater (1997) and Mousa (1994).EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo