Articulatory Methods for the Study of Second Language Speech

In the introduction to this special issue on articulatory approaches to the study of L2 speech, we first highlight the interest and unique contributions of such methods to the investigation of speech production among second language speakers. This is followed by a brief overview of the four articulatory methods-electropalatography, nasometry, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound-featured in the experimental studies presented in the seven articles that constitute the issue. We then turn to an overview of the speech phenomena investigated-consonants (laterals, rhotics), vowels (individual as well as entire inventories), and sequences (both phonemic vowel-nasal sequences as well as coarticulation in phonetic sequences)-as produced by L1 speakers of various target languages (L1s: English[-Croatian], Czech, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish; Target languages: English, French, Swedish). This introduction concludes with a summary of recurring acquisition themes (L1-based crosslinguistic influence, relative difficulty and target-likeness, inter-learner variability including as conditioned by individual differences) and the general speech phenomena studied (articulatory settings, gestural timing/coarticulation, effects of phonetic context).