Author(s)

Ahmed Mousa

King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

This study investigates the claim that the strategies employed by second/foreign language learners are the same as those used by speakers of Creole languages. The speech of two speakers of the well-known Broad Jamaican Creole is checked against the performance of Saudi learners of English, focusing on the production of the voiced alveo-palatal fricative/?/. The findings suggest that the speakers in the two groups produce the voiced affricate/d?/ instead, suggesting perhaps that the above claim is valid. This study provides external evidence to the validity of such theories as sound substitution, markedness, and historical sound change which are said to shape early language acquisition, including child language.

Alveo-Palatal Fricative, Broad Jamaican Creole, Saudi Learners of English, Creole, Language Acquisition

Mousa, A. (2015) Acquisition of the Alveo-Palatal Fricative /ʒ/ in L2 English and Jamaican Creole: A Comparative Study. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 5, 238-249. doi: 10.4236/ojml.2015.53020.