Advances in Cognitive Sociolinguistics (Cognitive Linguistic Research)

240 Gitte Kristiansen

cation of L2 accents. This test was not less “tough” than the first: to what
extent can a child discern the origin of a non-native speaker of peninsular
Spanish on the basis of transfer from the speaker’s mother tongue (or
mother accent in the case of Latin American speakers)?

3.1. Method

To assess this question, 7 additional instances of the same text as in expe-
riment 1 were recorded. This time only one of the speakers was a native
from peninsular Spain. The rest were L2 speakers with a medium degree of
competence so as to allow for transfer from the speaker’s L1 language and
L1 speakers of a Latin American variety. The origin and order of the sam-
ples were as follows:

(1) United States of America (Washington D.C., female)

(2) Argentina (Buenos Aires, male)

(3) Germany (Nürnberg, female)

(4) Spain (Zaragoza, female)

(5) Mexico (Puebla de Zaragoza, female)

(6) England (Manchester, female)

(7) France (Reims, female)

The children were provided with a multiple-choice form:

Indicate with numbers (1-7) where these speakers are from:

… Spain

… Argentina

… Mexico

… France

… Germany

… The United States of America

… England

Furthermore, for each of the 7 accents the children were asked the same
two open questions as in Experiment 1:

Speaker nº 1:

Origin: _____________________

What did you observe in his/her pronunciation that makes you think the

speaker is from this area?

What other people or characters do you know who speak this way?