Patterns of regularity in final cluster reduction in L2 English by L1 Spanish speakers

Abstract

This paper reports on an attempt to find regularity in patterns in the reduction of syllable final clusters by English L2/Venezuelan Spanish L1 speakers. In previous studies, regularity has already been proved for several languages; however, such studies for Spanish speakers are scarce. We considered three phonological aspects: length of the codas, violation of the sonority scale and the presence of inflectional morphology. Four subjects were asked to record a total of 320 words containing different types of clusters. The results, as expected, showed a preference of short codas over long codas. The presence of inflectional morphemes was also a determiner in coda reduction, with a clear preference for reducing words that had a past tense or plural marker. However, cluster reduction due to violations to sonority scale hierarchy did not produce strong results.