| Summary: | 碩士 === 靜宜大學 === 英國語文學系 === 102 === This study explores the diachronic substitution of voiceless interdental fricatives /θ/ by learners of English as a second language in Taiwan. It describes in each particular period of time how L2 learners perceive the phoneme /θ/ in error, and to find out the most frequent error sound from these errors. The purpose is to see whether in different learning period differential substitution occurs when learners substitute [t], [s], [f], or [∫] for [θ].
Twenty-five third-grade L2 students at the elementary school, 25 seven-grade junior high school students and 25 from various non-English departments participated in this research. A wordlist of 55 words were used for the participants to choose the sound they heard. Twenty one words with the target sound [θ] are in three positions, which are 7 words in onset position, 7 in medial position, and 7 in coda position. The other 34 words are fillers in order to avoid the participants’ knowledge of the research. The wordlist were recorded by a Canadian whose mother tongue is English. Data collected by the participants from these three different educational levels can show the target sound [θ] is perceptually replaced by the students of different periods.
The results show that the perception test is not consistent with the results in production. The participants at three education levels perceived the voiceless interdental fricative [θ] wrongly as the voiceless labiodental fricative [f] the most. Also, the duration of learning English is one possible reason to examine the error sound; that is, the error rates of the participants at university are less than the other two education levels. There is no significant difference between each education level. For the phonological environment, the only significant difference is at university. The replaced sound [f] does occur between a consonant follow by a vowel.
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