Perception of Spanish diphthong /ei/ by second language and heritage speakers of Spanish: findings from two perception tasks

Abstract The current study investigates how native English phonetic categories affect the perception of Spanish diphthong /ei/ for second language (L2) learners and heritage speakers (HS) of Spanish. Based in L2 speech models (PAM-L2 and SLM-r), it was hypothesized that late L2 learners, especially beginners, would struggle in the categorization and discrimination of Spanish diphthong /ei/ and monophthong /e/ due to their predicted assimilation to the same first language (L1) English category. In contrast, heritage speakers (HS), exposed to these sounds from an early age, may have advantages over the L2 learners in the perception of Spanish /ei/. To test this, an identification task and an ABX discrimination task were administered to beginning-L2 learners, HS, and non-heritage native speakers (NHNS) of Spanish. Results showed that L2 learners were less accurate in identifying and discriminating Spanish /ei/, particularly in word-final position, where more L2 vowel lengthening has been found to occur Nibert (2012. Factors affecting the off-gliding of mid vowels by intermediate-level adult learners of Spanish with L1 English . Poster presented at the Current Approaches to Spanish and Portuguese Second Language Phonology Conference, University of South Carolina, 16–19 February), while HS performed similarly to NHNS in perception of Spanish /ei/. Some differences in vowel identification mappings were noted between HS and NHNS, however, possibly due to HS knowledge of English orthography. Overall, findings support the predictions made under the PAM-L2 and SLM-r and highlight the effects of early language exposure and cross-linguistic influence on L2 and HS speech perception.