Variability in the production of coronal plosives between heterosyllabic consonants by speakers of English as an L2 from the city of Campina Grande

Abstract

This work investigates the acquisition of a marked structure in English by L2 learners from the city of Campina Grande in the state of Paraíba, Brazil, focusing on the production of triconsonantal sequences of the type Ct/d]_σC. More specifically, our sociolinguistic research seeks to describe and explain the variation in the interlanguage of L2 learners of English regarding the production of the coronal plosives between heterosyllabic consonants. For this purpose, 24 informants were asked to read aloud a list of 43 target words embedded in 160 carrier sentences, and half of these participants were also requested to produce words/phrases from images. Therefore, the database consists of 1,071 tokens, which were analyzed using the new variable rule program, Rbrul (JOHNSON, 2015), as well as the speech analysis program Praat (BOERSMA; WEENINK, 2013). The mixed effects model provided by Rbrul selected a random variable (informants) and three fixed variables (sonorities of the preceding and following consonants, and L2 proficiency) as being statistically significant for the application of repairs to the coronal plosives flanked by heterosyllabic consonants. Based on the premise that language structures are not conditioned only by linguistic factors, our discussion focuses on the most relevant internal and external factors (fixed effects).