274

Leather, Jonathan and James, Allan (eds), 1992: New

Sounds 92. Proceedings of the 1992 Amsterdam Symposium
on the Acquisition of Second-language Speech. University of
Amsterdam, 222 pp.

New Sounds 92 is a collection of papers presented at the second

Amsterdam Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language
Speech. The volume constitutes evidence that the syntax monopoly
in second language acquisition (SLA) studies has truly been bal-
anced by a substantial interest in the phonological development of a
second language. It also demonstrates that this interest crosses the
boundaries between various phonological models as well as
between phonology and related disciplines like psychology, sociol-
ogy and pedagogy, and often goes beyond the traditional con-
trastive studies perspective.
In the present review, I will group the contributions to the vol-
ume under a number of general topics with which they could be
classified as being concerned. I will give the gist of the content of
each contribution and add a comment here and there.

7 The critical period hypothesis .

Lennebergs (1967) sceptical approach to the abilities of adults in

SLA has been very often discussed, modified or undermined. There
have been suggestions like, for instance, a critical period only for
phonology (Scovel, 1988) or multi-competence as a norm (Cook,
1991). John Archibald concentrates in his paper on Age-Dependent
Effects (Flynn and Manuel, 1991) and shows that they may not
extend to suprasegmental phonology. He adopts the metrical para-
meters model of Dresher and Kaye (1990), within the deductive
framework of principles and parameters (Chomsky, 1981). He
investigated the SLA of stress in English by speakers of Polish and
Hungarian, who turned out to be generally successful at this task.
One of the explanations he offers why it should be so is that
stress is a categorial phenomenon, not a continuous one. A graphic
illustration of the distinction between the categorial and the contin-
uous given by the author suggests, however, that phonology is cate-
gorial and phonetics continuous. To posit such a distinction today,
when phonology is becoming less and less categorial, is controver-
sial to say the least.

2 A search for a framework to explain the development of L2

phonology, and for constraints or principles that would predict the
direction of transfer
 275

Barbara Hancin-Bhatt and Rakesh Mohan Bhatt modify a feature

geometry approach (Sagey, 1986) to explain the choice of gap
filler, using the formal properties of underspecification theory
(Archangeli and Pulleyblank, forthcoming). Within this framework
they give a theoretical account of the pattern of acquisition of con-
sonants by Hindi speakers of English. In descriptive terms this is
achieved via the principle of minimal articulatory displacement.
Marit Helene Klove advocates a syllable approach to SLA, in
particular a moraic analysis of the syllable template as in prosodic
theory as proposed by lt6, the acquisition of Norwegian syllable
structure by Cantonese learners.
Universal markedness as a constraint on acquisition has been one
of the most prominent topics in SLA research, associated most con-
spicuously with the works of Eckman e.g. 1977. Robert S. Carlisle
decided to study the interaction of markedness and environment as
factors conditioning the application of epenthesis by Spanish learn-
ers of English (cf. also Carlisle, 1994). The process of epenthesis
turned out to be less frequent before the less marked cluster /sl-/ (as
compared to the more marked /sN-/) and after a vowel (as com-
pared to a consonant) in the previous syllable.
It does not become clear in the paper why the author separates
the environment of a process from markedness considerations. The
case described is a case of a more or less marked environment with

respect to the application of epenthesis: one does not expect vowel

epenthesis in the context of a vowel since a vowel hiatus which
would arise due to epenthesis would constitute a more marked
structure. Even more simply, one could speak here of a functionally
based universal process aiming at the simplification (or improve-
ment) of phonotactic structure, whereby the context for vowel
epenthesis is predictable.
Martha Young-Scholten finds support for the subset principle in
predicting the direction of transfer in interlanguage phonology. She
applies the subset principle to the prosodic hierarchy (cf. Nespor
and Vogel, 1982) of German and English in her study of the acquisi-
tion of word final voiced obstruents and flapping by German learn-
ers of English. In terms of resyllabification (as it bears on obstruent

devoicing and flapping), English is a superset of German, so

German learners are predicted to be able to use positive evidence
(from a superset) when learning English, while transferring their
subset setting. Her data appear to confirm the prediction.
The paper gives a hint as to what kind of approach the reader will
find in the authors recent (1993) book on the acquisition of clitics
by German learners of English (see a review in this volume).
276

3 The effect of L2 experience (exposure) in SLA

A reasonable assumption used to be that exposure to a second lan-

guage has a facilitating effect on the process of acquisition. Ocke-
Schwen Bohn notes that the assumption is too optimistic: either it is
valid only before 12 years of age or it has a negative effect. He
examined the accuracy with which L2 vowels are produced by L2
learners, here German speakers of English. For instance, the ren-
dering of /e/ as in bet was worse after several years of exposure to
English. To account for the phenomenon, the author applies a
speech learning model (Flege, 1987, 1992) which distinguishes
between the acquisition of similar and new sounds. Similar ones
undergo equivalence classification, new ones evade it. For instance,
without new vowels in the acoustic neighbourhood of similar vow-
els, the default course of learning, i.e., equivalence classification,
takes place, with little or no subsequent progress. With a new vowel
also present, however, i.e., in the case of a similar vowel and a new
vowel with common properties, deflection by the new vowel takes
place: first, a new vowel is attempted with the value of a similar one,
then additional experience leads to the formation of a category for
the new vowel, so the similar one can return to L1 values (~ nega-
tive effect).

4 Foreign accent i. e. interferenceltransfer from Ll

Since Lados (1957) Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis various
approaches to transfer have developed while the topic itself has
remained the most popular one among SLA researchers. Three
papers from the volume are classifiable under this topic.
M. Grazia 2?MM predicts that, due to the rhythmic differences
between Italian and English, durational and spectral reductions
specific for English may be absent in the English of Italians. She
found out that contrasts in the durational domain are acquired
more easily than in the spatial domain.
Roy C. Major compares the influence of transfer and develop-
mental factors in the SLA of consonant clusters. His Ontogeny
Model (cf. Major 1987) claims that transfer processes decrease over
time, while developmental processes increase and then decrease in
the process of second language acquisition. In the present contribu-
tion, the acquisition of clusters by Brazilian Portuguese learners of
English is considered from a longitudinal and stylistic perspective.
The data bring support to his model in terms of chronology, but not
in terms of style. What the reader will not find, however, is an
explanation of the discussed phenomena within some theoretical
 277

phonological framework. This could be of interest in differentiating

the clusters being acquired and in for example accounting for that
differentiation.
Bdrbel Treichel posits a linearization unit in L2 speech production
as a unit of conceptualization and processing activity. Temporal
variables such as pauses, speech rate and hesitation phenomena are
studied in the speech of French learners of German. Hesitations
showed that conceptualization activities take place on a preverbal
level and, thus, do not necessarily relate to the problems caused by
the L2 speech situation.

5 Pedagogy-oriented approaches to SLA ...

Beverly Collins and Inger M. Mees arrive at useful pronunciation

training hints for Danish and Dutch learners of English on the basis
of a comparison of the articulatory settings of the languages con-
cerned.
Olaf Husby suggests modelling Norwegian intonation in the
speech of Vietnamese learners by means of introducing Vietnamese
orthographic features for tones.
Martha C. Pennington investigates discourse correlates of phono-
logical proficiency in the English of Japanese learners. Among the
fluency features which correlate with a general measure of phono-
logical proficiency, the strongest predictors turned out to be mea-
sures of length of runs and phonological grouping (linking and
stress footing).

6 The role of attitudes in SLA

Monique van der Haagen studied the attitudes of Dutch learners to
the pronunciation of British vs. American English. Four factors
were found to be significant: status, activity, personal affect and
school norm. The results can be summarized by the following
quote: Britons have status and speak the norm variety, while
Americans are dynamic and attractive but speak a non-standard
variety (93).
Ton Koets paper offers an assessment of non-native (Dutch) pro-
nunciation of English by American listeners, compared to an assess-
ment by British English and Dutch listeners.

7 Bilingualism
The aim of Mahendra K. Verma, Sally Firth and Karen Corrigans
contribution is to assess the validity of a claim concerning a fairly
278

uniform pattern in the phonological system of Indians learning

English as L2 - independent of the environment in question
(Bansal, 1969: 121). They investigated the speech of South Asian
second/third generation migrants learning English in Britain. In
particular, speakers of Urdu and Panjabi. The results showed that
Bansals claim does not extend to second/third generation speakers
in Britain: their speech exhibited transfer from LIs and/or adapta-
tion to the local variety of English.
A point of criticism that may be made is that in the analysis of the
data, e.g., of the realization of consonant clusters (where the
processes of epenthesis, reduction or metathesis take place), there
is no real attempt at a universal phonological explanation. Here one
could distinguish between universal processes applying in the inter-
language, L1 interference and L2-specific processes already
acquired for example.
The volume closes with a research workshop synopsis by Marije
van Wieringen and Judith van Bladel. Although the synopsis serves
the purpose of informing the reader about the topics addressed by
the participants, it would have been more profitable to have the
original statements of the participants published.
Notwithstanding the points of criticism made with reference to
some of the papers, the volume definitely deserves the attention of
all SLA researchers and phonologists interested in external evi-
dence as well as students of language and linguistics.

Appendix
List of the languages discussed in the volume, arranged in L1-L2
pairs.
Polish-English French-German
Hungarian-English Vietnamese-Norwegian
Hindi-English Danish-English
Cantonese-Norwegian Dutch-English ,

Spanish-English Japanese-English
German-English 2x Dutch-British and American English 2x
Italian-English Urdu-English ,

Brazilian Portuguese- Panjabi-English

English
Reviewed by Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kolaczyk
University of Vienna and University of Poznan