Vocalic instability in L3 acquisition: The case of falling diphthongs [aj] [oj] among Japanese learners of Spanish

Much has been written about the acquisition of L2 phonology. In addition to this research, recent years have witnessed an exponential growth in the study of cross-linguistic influence in L3 acquisition (Cenoz, 2005; Cenoz, et al., 2001; Cenoz & Ulrike, 2000; de Angelis, 2005, 2007; Gut, 2010); however, there is a noteworthy lack of literature dealing with L3 acoustic analyses (Gut, 2010, Llama, et al., 2010). In order to fill this gap, this study examines the production of Spanish L3 falling diphthongs among Japanese L1-English L2 speakers in the US. The data indicate that falling diphthongs are the most vulnerable to errors in Spanish L3 due to transfer from prosodic variation and degree of task formality.