Acquisition of the Closing Diphthongs /əʊ/ and /eɪ/ in English L2 and Jamaican Creole

Abstract

This study investigates the claim that the strategies used by second/foreign language learners are, more or less, the same as those used by speakers of pidgin/creole languages. To this end, the speech of two speakers of the well-known Broad Jamaican Creole is compared with the performance of Saudi learners of English, with respect to the pronunciation of the closing diphthongs /əʊ/ and /eɪ/. The results show that the above claim is valid. Also, the behavior of the two groups corroborates that of child language, which will be taken as external evidence that adds to the existent literature of the logical problem of language learning. The behavior of the speakers in the three domains (i.e., L1, L2, and pidgin/creole languages) goes hand in hand with norms of historical change. That is, the two diphthongs have historically developed from the monophthongs used as substitutes. In addition, the centrality component in these diphthongs is a marked parameter, which is yet to be set before they could be mastered. The substitutes made by the speakers of Jamaican Creole and by Arab learners are the same chosen by the child.