DOI: 10.5507/ff.14.24440606.22

The Spanish High Front Vowel in Czech Bilinguals

Štěpánka Čechová

This paper is focused on the production of the Spanish high front vowel [i] in advanced Czech learners of Spanish. Because of the phonetic similarity between the high front vowels in both languages, there is a strong likelihood that Czech speakers will pronounce this Spanish vowel in exactly the same way as the counterpart Czech vowel [ɪ] in the same context. This suggestion was tested on ten female L2 Spanish speakers recorded in laboratory conditions. The vowel [ɪ] and [i] was elicited in four different consonantal contexts (p, t, k, and χ/x) and two styles (word list and text) in Czech and Spanish, respectively. The first and second vowel formants were measured, converted into ERB and compared. The results of the study show significant differences in F1 between Czech and L2 Spanish high front vowels in the cases of style variation and context variation, where lower values are associated with the first formant of L2 Spanish [i] in the text style and in the environments of the consonants t and p. On the other hand, little difference was found as far as F2 was concerned.

stránky: 303-312



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