Geminate consonants by a group of Albanian learners of L2 Italian

Perception and production of a non-native contrast

Abstract

The non-native consonantal length contrast is difficult to acquire due to its articulatory complexity and typological markedness. This study aims at investigating the perception and the oral and written production of Italian geminates in a small group of Albanian adult learners with a different competence in L2 Italian. A set of tasks with various levels of complexity, including words and non-words in isolation and in context were used. The consonant perception and production errors were calculated in all tests crossing the interlinguistic and tasks variables. The results confirmed the major difficulty in oral production, whereas the perception and written production reached a high level of accuracy. Particularly, the intermediate-advanced learners showed lower performances than the beginners in the completion of complex task demands including non-words.