Spanish Stops And Their Allophones Produced By Proficient Mandarin Learners Of Spanish

This study examined the pronunciation of Spanish stops by Mandarin learners of Spanish, with the focus on the realization of voiced stops, voiceless stops, and allophonic spirants of voiced stops in isolated words and in running speech. We recruited 10 Mandarin-speaking learners with high-proficiency Spanish skills and 6 native Peninsular Spanish speakers. They read words containing the target sounds and a short paragraph. Voice onset time was measured for the stops and the manner of articulation was coded for the allophones of voiced stops. The results showed that Mandarin learners of Spanish could distinguish the two types of stops. However, their production of voiceless stops in isolated words and the voiced stops in the paragraph were significantly different from native speakers. Moreover, most Mandarin speakers could not produce spirantized allophone of voiced stops as much as native speakers did in both reading tasks. These results indicate that the pronunciation of phonemes in a second language and the acquisition of nonnative allophonic phonemes are still challenging even for high-proficiency learners.