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Innovative Approaches to Research in Hispanic Linguistics: Regional, diachronic, and learner profile variation
Edited by Sara Fernández Cuenca, Tiffany Judy and Lauren Miller
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 38] 2023
► pp. 196–224

Chapter 9
Individual differences do not affect trill variation by advanced learners of Spanish

| SUNY Albany
| University of North Carolina Wilmington

The current study analyzed whether variation in trill pronunciation by advanced learners of Spanish is conditioned by individual differences in phonological short-term memory, executive working memory, second language vocabulary score, and years of study, as well as five linguistic variables. We found that none of the individual difference variables significantly affected variation, while surrounding phonetic context and lexical stress were important predictors of this variation. The findings suggest that these individual differences do not impact trill variation by advanced learners, possibly because these factors are more important at lower levels of proficiency, or because trill variability is largely impacted by phonetic factors due to the well-known articulatory difficulty of this sound.

Keywords: trill, second language acquisition, individual differences, variation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Native speaker trill production
  • 3.Second language learner trill production
  • 4.Individual differences and L2 phonological skills
    • 4.1Working memory
    • 4.2Phonological short-term memory
    • 4.3Executive working memory
    • 4.4Vocabulary size
  • 5.The current study
  • 6.Methods
    • 6.1Participants
    • 6.2Tasks
    • 6.3Phonological short-term memory
    • 6.4Working memory
    • 6.5Vocabulary measure
    • 6.6Oral response prompt task
    • 6.7Background questionnaire
    • 6.8Coding
      • 6.8.1Dependent variable
      • 6.8.2Independent variables
    • 6.9Analysis
  • 7.Results
    • 7.1Distribution of variants
    • 7.2Regression analyses
  • 8.Discussion
  • 9.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 7 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.38.09zha
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