Lexical subregularities and the stress preferences of L2 Spanish learners

Four levels of L2 Spanish learners (n = 115) and a control group of native Spanish speakers (n = 6) indicated their preferred pronunciation for a series of invented Spanish nouns and adjectives. Learners at all levels assigned stress differently to words ending in -icola than to other words ending in a vowel. The same was found to be true for words ending in -en versus those ending in either -an or -on. The observed stress-assignment patterns mirror Aske's (1990) findings for native speakers of Spanish and correspond to actual patterns in the Spanish lexicon. These findings indicate that L1 English learners are sensitive to certain lexical subregularities in L2 Spanish, even from very early on. Furthermore, they suggest that second-language learners use analogy in assigning stress in Spanish, a technique also reported for native speakers.