Learning the Sounds of Silence: Adult acquisition of Kaqchikel (Mayan) plain and glottalized stop consonants

Nelson, Brett Caswell

Learning the Sounds of Silence: Adult acquisition of Kaqchikel (Mayan) plain and glottalized stop consonants

dc.contributor.advisor	Flynn, Darin Matthew
dc.contributor.author	Nelson, Brett Caswell
dc.contributor.committeemember	Athanasopoulou, Angeliki
dc.contributor.committeemember	O'Brien, Mary Grantham
dc.contributor.committeemember	Winters, Stephen
dc.contributor.committeemember	Wrembel, Magdalena
dc.date	2024-06
dc.date.accessioned	2023-12-22T17:51:42Z
dc.date.available	2023-12-22T17:51:42Z
dc.date.issued	2023-12-21
dc.description.abstract	This thesis explores the third language acquisition of Kaqchikel, a Mayan language Indigenous to what is now called Guatemala, by analyzing the perception of the language’s stop consonants by multilingual Spanish-English learners of Kaqchikel. Spanish, as a voicing language, contrasts voiced stops from voiceless stops. English, as an aspirating language, contrasts aspirated stops from unaspirated stops. Kaqchikel, meanwhile, presents these learners with yet a third Laryngeal contrast, between glottalized stops and plain stops. Additionally, while both Spanish and English contrast three places of articulation among their stops, Kaqchikel contrasts four places. I analyze the differences and similarities among these languages’ phonologies by assuming a Feature Geometry framework. With this background, I investigate whether L1 Spanish, L2 English learners of L3 Kaqchikel differ from L1 English, L2 Spanish learners of L3 Kaqchikel in their perception of the stop consonants of their target language. The results of a stop discrimination task indicate minimal differences between the two learner groups. However, on a categorization task, more substantial differences between the two learner groups emerge. While L1 English learners are able to accurately categorize each of the eight Kaqchikel stop phonemes of Kaqchikel into their respective phonemic categories, including the novel glottalized and uvular stops, L1 Spanish learners are significantly less accurate in categorizing Kaqchikel stops. Their poor performance on this task is driven by their roughly chance performance in categorizing uvular stops; they perform much better with other Places. The two learner Groups, against predictions, do not differ based on the stimulus stop’s Laryngeal feature. To explain these surprising results, I propose that both groups are able to redeploy knowledge of underlying Laryngeal dimensions in order to provide an adequate structure for the novel glottalized stops of Kaqchikel. For the novel uvular stops, however, only the L1 English learners are able to redeploy knowledge of the Tongue Root dimension, while L1 Spanish learners maintain underlying structures that fail to distinguish between velar and uvular stops in Kaqchikel. This explanation integrates several different phonological analyses to account for predictions made by phonetic-based models of assimilation in second and third language acquisition.
dc.identifier.citation	Nelson, B. C. (2023). Learning the sounds of silence: adult acquisition of Kaqchikel (Mayan) plain and glottalized stop consonants (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1880/117817
dc.identifier.uri	https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/42660
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	phonology
dc.subject	third language acquisition
dc.subject	laryngeals
dc.subject	Kaqchikel language
dc.subject	Spanish language
dc.subject	English language
dc.subject.classification	Linguistics
dc.subject.classification	Education--Language and Literature
dc.subject.classification	Native American Studies
dc.title	Learning the Sounds of Silence: Adult acquisition of Kaqchikel (Mayan) plain and glottalized stop consonants
dc.type	doctoral thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Linguistics
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
ucalgary.thesis.accesssetbystudent	I do not require a thesis withhold – my thesis will have open access and can be viewed and downloaded publicly as soon as possible.