Acquiring Spanish /θ/ Abroad: Phonemic (Re-)mapping and Regional Variation

Abstract: The current study examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of the voiceless inter-dental fricative /θ/ by nine female English-speaking learners of Spanish during a 7-week study abroad immersion experience in León, Spain. We examine the role that graphemic representation plays in this development over time. The data come from a reading task with 79 utterances in response to a discourse context in words with the target phonemes /k/, /s/, or /θ/. Participants were recorded at the beginning (Time 1) and end of the program (Time 2). Most learners use the /θ/ by T2, and there is a clear difference in the phones employed for the orthographic triggers of the /θ/ between the first data collection and the second data collection. The results indicate that L2 learners can incorporate a novel phoneme, /θ/, into their phonological system based on region in response to graphemic reading triggers. However, this incorporation varies by individual. The complex phonemic and allophonic (re-) mappings between the English and Spanish sound systems and orthographic mappings also likely explain cases of overgeneralization of the [θ] in non-native contexts.