Studio acustico-percettivo di contrasti fonemici in Italiano L2/LS

The aim of this paper is to show how Galician learners of Italian L2/FL, perceive and produce specific Italian segmental oppositions by taking into account similarities and discrepancies between the two linguistic systems (Italian vs. Galician) and the role played by two sociolinguistic variables such as L1 use (Galician vs. Castilian) and the learner’s amount of L2 experience. The oppositions examined here deal with vowels (final unstressed /e – i/, /o – u/, an opposition that in Galician is reduced to /e – o/) and consonants (/b – v/, /ʦ – ʣ/, both absent in Galician). The goals are: (a) to verify the extent to which Italian vowel and consonant oppositions are identified by Galician learners of Italian L2/FL; (b) to analyse discrepancies in the way the oppositions are produced by Italian native speakers and learners of Italian L2/FL. Despite good percentages of correct perceptual identifications, speech analyses results show a considerable impact of L1 specific processes on L2 production.