Phonological Processes, Transfer,
and Markedness
TAMRIKA KHVTISIASHVILI
Framing the Issue
Phonology is a branch of linguistics that is concerned with the systematic
organization of sounds or phonemes in a given language. In this entry several of
the phonological processes that L2 speakers use to simplify the production of com-
plex words will be explored, together with the constructs of language transfer and
markedness, as well as a few developmental factors associated with language
learning. Phonological processes are speech patterns that are used by humans to
generally simplify spoken language. These processes can be used by young
children as they learn to speak their first language (L1), as well as by adults while
learning their second, or additional languages. The processes are varied and each
tells us something important about language acquisition. L2 researchers and
applied linguists at large are interested in investigating the parts of language pho-
nology that get transferred in a set order and according to the ease of learning.
Knowing the order of acquisition of certain linguistic features is useful informa-
tion to have in the preparation of language teaching materials and the delivery of
instruction.
Transfer is also known as L1 interference, linguistic interference, or crosslin-
guistic influence; it refers the process that occurs when speakers use the knowl-
edge they have of one language and apply it to another. An L1 most certainly
has an influence on the process of acquiring a second language (L2). Certain
aspects of our L1 get passed on to an L2 during the acquisition process in all
different areas of language—pragmatics, semantics, syntax, morphology,
phonology, phonetics, and orthography. The debate continues as to how and to
what extent.
Although there is reference to positive and negative transfer in the literature,
there is really only one process—transfer (Gass & Selinker, 2008). The positive and
negative reference has to do with the perceptions of the speaker rather than with
the fact that there are two different processes. Positive transfer refers to the
The TESOL Encyclopedia of English Language Teaching, First Edition.
Edited by John I. Liontas (Project Editor: Margo DelliCarpini).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118784235.eelt0711
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2 Phonological Processes, Transfer, and Markedness
language produced by L2 speakers that is perceived as correct by most native
speakers’ or highly proficient non-native speakers’ notions of acceptability.
Negative transfer refers to learner language that is perceived as incorrect or inap-
propriate by native and/or fluent non-native speakers. In second language acqui-
sition, much more attention is generally paid to what is called negative transfer. It
is believed that the greater the difference between the two languages, the more
negative transfer can be expected.
When something is marked, it means that it is unusual or more difficult in com-
parison to other items of the same type. Items are usually considered in a marked/
unmarked relationship, for example, regular and irregular verbs, such as talked
and went, or morphologically negative words, such as unhappy/happy, dishonest/
honest, or insincere/sincere. Irregular verbs and morphologically negative words are
the marked ones. Other examples of the marked/unmarked relation include
voiced versus voiceless obstruents (i.e., sounds made by obstructing airflow, such
as /t/ and /d/), nasalized versus oral vowels, and open versus closed syllables.
However, this binary relationship between certain linguistic representations is not
one of simple polar oppositions. One member of the opposition is assumed to be
more prominent in that it has a wider distribution, both within a given language
but also across languages. Imposing a markedness value on a language form is one
way of characterizing its special status: the member of the opposition that is more
widely distributed than the other is designated as unmarked, indicating that it is
simpler, more basic, and more natural than the other member, which is in turn
defined as the marked member. Within the c oncept of markedness, the presence of
one structure in a language implies the presence of another structure, but not vice
versa. In other words, the presence of a marked form assumes the presence of an
unmarked form, but not the reverse. Markedness is most often considered in rela-
tion to phonological, grammatical, and semantic properties of language.
Almost all children learn the rules of their L1 unconsciously through interaction
and use and without formal instruction. Therefore, one source of language for
humans is genetic or developmental. As with learning to crawl, standing alone, or
walking, language learning takes time to develop, and learners make use of devel-
opmental factors in the process as they proceed through certain stages. Language
teachers can benefit from knowing about some of these developmental factors,
especially those associated with speech production, as they can serve as indicators
of successful second language acquisition.
Making the Case
All children make predictable errors in pronunciation when learning both their L1
and an L2. What we call errors are really examples of phonological processes.
There are a number of common phonological processes that are found in learners’
speech that teachers of language learners will want to know about. In Table 1
Bowen (2011) outlines 11 predictable phonological processes that are used by both
L1 and L2 English learners.
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Phonological Processes, Transfer, and Markedness 3
Table 1 Phonological Processes in Typical English Language Speech Development.
Phonological
Processes English Example Description
Prevocalic car = gar A voiceless sound preceding a vowel is replaced
voicing by a voiced sound.
Word final red = ret A final voiced consonant is replaced by a
devoicing voiceless consonant.
Final consonant boat = bo A final consonant is deleted from a word.
deletion
Velar fronting car = tar A back sound is replaced by a front sound.
Palatal fronting ship = sip Sh and zh are replaced by /s/ and /z/
respectively.
Consonant cup = pup The pronunciation of a word is influenced by
harmony one of the sounds it “should” contain.
Weak syllable telephone = teffone Weak (i.e., unstressed) syllables are deleted
from words of more than one syllable.
Cluster try = ty A cluster element is deleted or replaced.
reduction
Gliding of ladder = wadder Liquids (i.e., /l/ and /r/) are replaced by
liquids glides.
Stopping ship = sip A stop consonant replaces a fricative or
affricate.
A person’s knowledge of a certain sound system of one language can affect that
person’s perception and production of speech sounds in another language.
Currently it is widely accepted that L1 phonology influences the acquisition of L2
phonology.
Some of the earliest work in the area of language transfer was done using the
contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH). The basic tenets of CAH were outlined by
Robert Lado (1957). The strongest form of CAH claimed that all errors made in an
L2 were the result of transfer from the L1. However, this claim turned out to be
false. While there is definitely evidence of transfer in learner language, as in the
example of word final devoicing or consonant deletion, transfer was not always
the source of learner errors. It was also true that some learners did not make errors
that were predicted to occur (e.g., some German learners of English have no diffi-
culty with the /r/). Still other researchers considered crosslinguistic influences
(Corder, 1983) or crosslinguistic generalizations (Zobl, 1983) from languages other
than one’s L1 as a source of learner errors. Ausubel (1963) went so far as to say that
all learning involves some kind of transfer. Such an approach would imply that
transfer is not just a linguistic phenomenon but is rather a general human learning
process. Researchers such as Andersen (1983) specified conditions under which
transfer could and could not operate. He claimed there have to be corresponding
structures in the L1 and L2 in order for transfer to operate. Andersen’s principles
would predict that English speakers would not transfer English sounds when they
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4 Phonological Processes, Transfer, and Markedness
tried to imitate, for instance, click consonants because there are no click consonants
in English.
The concept of markedness also enters into the idea of transfer. The principle of
markedness was pioneered by the Prague School of Linguistics in the 1930s, and the
terms marked and unmarked were introduced by Trubetzkoy (1969). Greenberg’s
Universals of Language (1963) has also been influential in the application of marked-
ness to typological linguistics. Greenberg took frequency to be the primary deter-
mining factor of markedness in grammar and suggested that unmarked categories
could be determined by the frequency of association of things in the real world.
Greenberg also applied frequency crosslinguistically, suggesting that unmarked cat-
egories would be those that are unmarked in a wide number of languages. However,
critics have argued that frequency is problematic because categories that are crosslin-
guistically infrequent may have a high distribution in a particular language.
There are two hypotheses relevant to L2 phonology that have been formulated
using the construct of typological markedness—the Markedness Differential
Hypothesis (MDH) (Eckman, 1977) and the Structural Conformity Hypothesis
(SCH) (Eckman, 1991). According to the MDH, the areas of difficulty that a lan-
guage learner will have can be predicted by the areas of the target language that
differ from the native language and are more marked than the native language.
Those areas of the target language that are different from the native language but
are not more marked than the native language will not be difficult. The kind of
evidence adduced in support of the MDH involved showing that learner errors
could not be accounted for on the basis of L1 versus L2 differences alone and that
typological markedness was necessary to explain the difficulty that learners
encountered. One such type of evidence, termed “directionality of difficulty,”
resulted when speakers from two different native language backgrounds attempted
to learn each other’s language. One learner encountered more difficulty than the
other. Another type of evidence involved markedness being invoked to explain
the different degrees of difficulty associated with learners from different L1 back-
grounds all acquiring the same target language. The third type of evidence in sup-
port of the MDH indicates that markedness can predict the relative degree of
difficulty associated with the learning of various target language structures.
According to the SCH, the universal generalizations that hold for primary lan-
guages hold for interlanguages as well. The primary motivation for this theory is
to look at language patterns per se (including interlanguages) and not as structural
differences between a speaker’s native language and the target language. The SCH
is the result of stripping away native language and target language differences and
looking at the kinds of universal structural patterns that can be found in the
world’s languages in general.
Pedagogical Implications
There are some interesting pedagogical conclusions and implications that one can
draw based on the constructs of transfer and markedness. It is expected that more
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Phonological Processes, Transfer, and Markedness 5
typologically common linguistic phenomena, such as unmarked features, create
circumstances for easier acquisition. Similarly, second language acquisition starts
with unmarked values for the parameters. However, the question that remains is
whether we transfer these parameter settings from our native language during
the process of L2 acquisition. In other words, is transfer affected by markedness?
Are unmarked qualities easier to transfer than the marked ones? Does teaching
the marked linguistic features guarantee the learning of the unmarked linguistic
features? Through the concept of transfer we already know that non-native
English speakers are likely to categorize foreign language sounds largely in terms
of the phonemic inventory of their own native language. If unmarked parts of
phonology are easier, faster, and first to be acquired, then this is very useful infor-
mation for language teaching, creating many pedagogical opportunities for most
learners.
The role of the native language in an L2 classroom context has been debated for
many years. Research was mostly concerned with the qualitative aspects of native
language influence. We know that transfer is not an all or nothing proposition. The
focus is on understanding the aspects of an L1 that are transferred and those that
are not. Researchers are also focused on understanding the underlying principles
that determine the transferability of any native language.
A hypothetical example would be the following: If one teaches English to native
speakers of Japanese who have never studied English, one can likely predict that
many of them will experience difficulties with English liquids (i.e., /r/ and /l/
phonemes in English) and syllable structure, because Japanese has only one liquid,
which is neither the English /l/ nor the /r/, and no closed syllables (except word
internal geminates). For example, MacDonald’s restaurant is pronounced [mæku-
donarodo]. Structuring a language classroom and lesson plans accordingly would
be beneficial to students and instructors.
SEE ALSO: Accent Reduction Versus Intelligibility; Historical Perspectives on
Teaching Speaking; Interlanguage Phonology; Teaching the Sound System of
English
References
Andersen, P. K. (1983). Word order typology and comparative constructions. Amsterdam,
Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Ausubel, D. P. (1963). Cognitive structure and the facilitation of meaningful verbal learning.
Journal of Teacher Education, 14, 217–22.
Bowen, C. (2011). Table 2: Phonological Processes. Retrieved from http://www.speech-
language-therapy.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30:table2&
catid=11&Itemid=101
Corder, S. P. (1983). A role for the mother tongue. In S. Gass & L. Selinker (Eds.), Language
transfer in language learning (2nd ed., pp. 18–31). Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Eckman, F. (1977). Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. Language Learning,
27, 315–30.
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6 Phonological Processes, Transfer, and Markedness
Eckman, F. (1991). The structural conformity hypothesis and the acquisition of consonant
clusters in the interlanguage of ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13, 23–41.
Gass, S., & Selinker, L. (2008). Second language acquisition: An introductory course IK (3rd ed.).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Greenberg, J. H. (Ed.). (1963). Universals of language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Trubetzkoy, N. (1969). Principles of phonology. Paris, France: Klincksieck.
Zobl, H. (1983). Markedness and the projection problem. Language Learning, 33, 293–313.
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