A classroom study on the perception and production of Basque sibilant fricatives by native speakers of English

Abstract

This study examines the production and perception of the three Basque sibi-lant fricatives by L1 English learners in a semester-long university course. Basque has three sibi-lant fricatives: lamino-alveolar (/s̻/), apico-alveolar (/s̺/), and pre-palatal (/ʃ/) sounds. Acousti-cally, the first two sounds share similarities with English /s/ and /ʃ/, respectively. L2 phonology theories posit that learners will map the production and perception of L2 sounds to (similar) sounds in their native language. Afterwards, they will create new categories based on the pho-netic proximity of the new sounds and those in their native language. Ten students enrolled in a Beginners’ Basque course and two native speakers of Basque serving as control group undertook a read-aloud task (Experiment 1) followed by an ABX discrimination task (Experiment 2) dur-ing Week 5 of classes. Center of Gravity and accuracy scores were extracted. Results show that learners tended to merge the two apical sibilants into an English /s/-like sound. Accuracy scores between the two alveolar sibilants in Basque were significantly lower than the other sound con-trasts.