The effect of phonological environment variation on L2 interlanguage variation: A study of the acquisition of English initial /n-/ and /l-/ by Cantonese speakers

This study investigates the phonological variation of initial /n-/ and /l-/ in the English interlanguage of Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong, who substitute /n-/ by /l-/ in their spontaneous speech in the mother tongue. In this study, the variations of phonological environment which may lead to interlanguage variations were closely examined. The variations of the phonological environment of /n-/ consisted of /n-/ followed by different vowels, by nasal or non nasal coda and in a consonant cluster; /n-/ followed by different nasal coda; an onset /n-/ in a syllable at different positions of polysyllabic words, and /n-/ words required re-syllabification. The study included female and male university students. Six tasks were designed for collecting data, including conversation, interview, passage reading, word reading, minimal pair reading and minimal pair repetition. Results indicate that systematic phonological variation patterns in terms of phonological environment variations were not clearly shown in the learners' interlanguage. We argue that other factors, including L1 influence, learners’ phonological awareness, learning process and word knowledge, are better than the phonological environment in accounting for the interlanguage variation in focus.