Voice quality and L2 proficiency in the English tense-lax contrast

• Main Author: Geoffrey Schwartz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Presses Universitaires du Midi 2019-11-01
• Series: Anglophonia
• Subjects: Vowels; L2 speech; tense-lax contrast; Element Theory; phonetics-phonology interface
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/anglophonia/2058

Experimental studies of the English contrasts between high vowels (sometimes referred to as a tense-lax contrast) have shown that phonation characteristics may play a role in maintaining the opposition in native varieties: tense vowels in English have been found to show a greater degree of breathiness, while lax vowels exhibit a stiffer voice quality. The present paper investigates the degree to which Polish learners of English implement phonation differences in their L2 productions of tense vs. lax vowels. Results of an acoustic study suggest that L1 Polish speakers with a high level of English proficiency incorporate voice quality differences, while less proficient learners do not. Implications for the phonological representation of vowel quality are also discussed. It is argued that phonation characteristics can contribute to the realization of holistic phonological primes akin to those found in Element Theory, which allows us to better understand the evolutionary relationship between linguistic and extra-linguistic use of voice quality.