April 6, 2017
Mary Copple to present spring Modern Languages' Signatures Lecture
Mary Copple, associate professor of Spanish, will give the spring Modern Languages' Signatures Lecture at 4 p.m. Friday, April 7, in 127 Leadership Studies Building.
Copple will present "Constructing Two Phonological Systems: Factors That Influence (foreign) Accent."
Lecture abstract: Second language speakers may develop a "native-like" accent or may struggle to leave a "foreign" accent behind. In order to examine factors that contribute to this success — or the lack thereof — we examine the pronunciation of word-initial /p,t,k/ in English and Spanish. These sounds were selected as it is well-established that English has a longer duration than Spanish. Participants were K-State students who belonged to three groups: early sequential bilinguals — i.e., Heritage speakers — who began English schooling around age 5; late sequential second language English bilinguals from Ecuador; and late sequential second language Spanish bilinguals from Kansas and/or Kansas City.
Copple will discuss how successfully each group has transitioned to their second language pronunciation of /p,t,k/ and what factors, both linguistic and cognitive, may have affected their level of success.