![]() LoR was also investigated in the current study, but not by separating the L2 speakers into two groups, but rather by examining the correlation between the L2 speakers’ production and their LoR in the UK. The current study aimed to partially replicate the findings of Flege and Port ( 1981), extending the experimental scope to include more vowels and examine the production of nonnative Saudi speakers of English in a different native language community, the United Kingdom. Length of residence (LoR) in the USA was not found to play any significant role in the production of the L2 speakers nonetheless, the findings were mixed and sometimes counterintuitive (e.g., those with shorter LoR produced longer durational contrast than those with longer LoR). However, variation between the L2 speakers was noticed and a few of them were found to approximate the durational patterns of the native English speakers. The L2 speakers were found to have a smaller durational contrast before voiced and voiceless stops in the production of /æ/ than the native English speakers. Such phonetic realizations are difficult for nonnative English speakers and may cause their speech to be recognized as foreign accented or even unintelligible (Flege, 1981 Tajima et al., 1997).įlege and Port ( 1981) compared the production of pre-fortis clipping by Saudi L2 English speakers, who were living in the USA, and a group of native American English speakers. For example, the /i:/ vowel in the word seat is shorter than the /i:/ vowel in the word seed. This has come to be known as pre-fortis clipping in English (Wells, 2019). ![]() Vowels before voiced obstruents in syllable-final position are considerably longer than when they occur before voiceless obstruents (Chen, 1970 Peterson and Lehiste, 1960 Wells, 2019). One of the main perceptual cues native English listeners use to distinguish syllable-final voiced and voiceless obstruents (i.e., stops, affricates, and fricatives) is the duration of the preceding vowels (Crowther and Mann, 1992 Raphael, 1972 Sanker, 2019). ![]() In addition, no significant correlation was found between the length of residence and the L2 speakers’ production. However, the results varied across the three examined vowels. Similar to the findings of Flege and Port (1981), both the Saudi native Arabic and L2 English speakers showed broadly less durational contrast between the vowels in the two contexts than did the native English speakers. ![]() A durational ratio of each vowel before /t/ to the same vowel before /d/ was calculated for each speaker in the native and nonnative groups. Similar vowels in a similar context were also obtained in Arabic from Saudi native speakers. The same vowels in the same context were also elicited from a reference group of native English speakers. 16 Saudi L2 English speakers were requested to produce the English vowels /æ/, /ɪ/ and /i:/ in a carrier word, once before the voiceless stop /t/ and once before the voiced stop /d/. In addition, it examined whether language experience operationalized as the length of residence in an English-speaking country, had any positive effect on the production of the pre-fortis clipping by the Saudi L2 English speakers. The current study is a partial replication of Flege and Port (Language Speech 24(2):125–146, 1981), which examined the production of pre-fortis clipping (i.e., vowel shortening before voiceless obstruents) by Saudi L2 English speakers.
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