Research Group: Language Development and Development Disorders

The Role of Sonority in Second Language Acquisition Cristina Trujillo Issue: Children acquire their mother tongue (L1) without any problems if they do not suffer from any kind of pathology. On the contrary, second language learners (L2) never reach this competence since at least the foreign accent refering to the L1 remains. The current research shows that the morphological, syntactical or semantical constraints are less susceptible to be transfered from L1 to the interlanguage than phonological ones. The learning strategies used by the L2 learners seem to be guided by universal markedness and by universal sonority principles, and not by the phonotactical structure of L1.

In GrKK since 10/96 as Ph.D. student

Goal: Present work aims at researching how the phonological component operates in the acquisition process of the syllable structure of German (L2) by Spanish speakers (L1). This issue is especially interesting since the Spanish syllable structure does neither violate the sonority nor the markedness principles, which the German syllable does.

Method: 20 Spanish adult subjects take part in this experiment. The data are collected by means of a translation task from Spanish to German. The stimuli are words whose segments show different degrees of markedness and sonority.

Results (so far): We claim that the universal sonority principles play a very important role in L2 acquisition. The results of the test experiment show that the German syllables which do not violate the sonority and markedness principles are easier to acquire by Spanish speakers than the ones which violate the sonority principles. Recall that Spanish does not allow neither of them.