Stress-induced acoustic variation in L2 and L1 Spanish vowels

Abstract

Aim: the present study assessed the effect of lexical stress on the duration and quality of Spanish vowels // produced by American English late intermediate learners of L2 Spanish,as compared to those of native L1 Argentine Spanish speakers. Methods: 54 real words ending in // with final and penultimate lexical stress were used as target words embedded in a short fable and a word list. Acoustic measurements of vowel duration, F1 and F2 frequencies were made. Results: Lexical stress affected the duration and quality (i.e. F1 only) of both L2 and L1 Spanish vowels similarly: under stress vowels had longer duration and higher F1 values while in the absence of lexical stress vowels were shorter and raised in the vowel space. Although the effects of stress were observed in the same direction across groups, English learners? stressed and unstressed vowels showed significantly longer duration and higher F1 values than native Spanish speakers? vowels. Findings also revealed compression of the L2 Spanish vowel space in the absence of stress. Conclusion: Findings reported in this article contribute to the overall body of literature related to the L2 Spanish vowel system and present a detailed acoustic description of Argentine River Plate Spanish,a variety not well documented in the Spanish experimental literature.