Vowels phonetic detail in the realization of the -ed morpheme by Brazilian learners of English as an additional language

This study aims to analyze the phonetic detail of the vowel realizations of the -ed morpheme in the simple past tense of regular verbs by Brazilian learners of English as an Additional Language (EAL). Based on Complex Adaptive Systems and Exemplars Theory, we seek to answer the following research question: which are the acoustic-articulatory characteristics of phonetic detail associated to vowel realizations of the -ed morpheme by Brazilian EAL learners? Our hypothesis is that the full vowel ɪ and the epenthetic vowels ɛ and i exhibit differences in height, frontness, and duration. For data collection, we carried out two experiments: ING1 involved sentence reading; ING2 involved sentence reading and image description. Results indicated significant differences between the full vowel ɪ and the epenthetic vowels in terms of frontness. For the epenthetic vowels ɛ and i, results showed significant differences in height and duration. In the comparison among the three vowels, results showed significant differences in height, frontness, and duration. These results highlight the notion that mental representations incorporate phonetic detail information in the construction of exemplar clouds.

Keywords:
language as complex adaptive system ; exemplar theory ; phonetic detail