On the status of terminal devoicing as an interlanguage process among Brazilian learners of English

Abstract

This paper investigates the status of Terminal Devoicing in the light of connectionism, by revisiting this process in a more dynamic framework. It focuses on the acquisition of two acoustic cues that distinguish final voiced from voiceless stops in English: (1) percentage of voicing in the stop closure; (2) length of the vowel that precedes the obstruent. Data obtained from Brazilian students of English were compared to those collected from American speakers, in order to check whether the learners' productions differed significantly from native speech. Results showed that neither voicing in the closure nor vowel length were totally neutralized, which indicates that learners are starting to distinguish final voiceless and voiced stops.

Keywords

• Terminal Devoicing
• Connectionism
• Interlanguage Phonology