Resolving contiguous vowels across word boundaries in Spanish: L2 learners, levels, and tasks

This paper reports on the application of synalepha, the phonological process of merging or linking contiguous vowels across word boundaries, as in mi amigo [mi̯a.ˈmi.ɣ̞o], meaning ‘my friend’. We examine two English-speaking L1 groups learning Spanish as an L2 compared to a Spanish monolingual-speaking group and include a narrative-retell and a reading task. In the reading task, the intermediate learner group produced linked or connected vowel sequences in only 30% of the potential contiguous sequences, compared to a frequency of linked vowels at 74% by advanced graduate student learners. The intermediate learners increased the frequency of linking contiguous vowels to 49% in the narrative-retell task, whereas the advanced L2 speakers slightly reduced their linking rate to 68%. The Mexican monolingual speaker comparison group produced linked speech in a narrative-retell task at a rate of 93%. These findings show that the application of phonological processes is impacted by task type and has implications for classroom teaching activities that incorporate narrative-retell tasks to encourage monolingual patterns of vowel linking.