The present study aims to resolve previous disputes about whether or not non-palatalized consonants exhibit secondary velarization in Russian, and if so what this corresponds to articulatorily. Three questions are asked: 1) are Russian non-palatalized consonants velarized or not? If so, 2) what are the articulatory properties of velarization? and 3) how is the presence or absence of secondary velarization affected by adjacent vowels? To answer these questions, laryngeal and lingual ultrasound investigations were conducted on a range of non-palatalized consonants across different vowel contexts. The results of the study show that 1) Russian non-palatalized consonants are not pharyngealized in the sense of Esling (1996, 1999, 2005), 2) /l/ and /f/ are uvularized, 3) /s/ and /ʂ/ can feature either uvularization or velarization. The study also shows that secondary articulations of Russian non-palatalized consonants are inherent rather than dependent on vowel context. / Graduate / 0290 / natallia@uvic.ca

Second language acquisition (SLA) research is rich in possibilities for examining language-specific phonetics and phonology in the cross-linguistic context of acquisition. However, much of the existing English-Spanish research focuses on the acquisition of voice onset time (VOT) of /p, t, k, b, d, ɡ/ or rhotics, or on acquisition in relation to factors such as task type, time abroad, and motivational intensity (e.g. Alvord & Christiansen, 2012; Díaz-Campos, 2004, 2006; Face, 2006; Martinsen, 2010; Martinsen & Alvord, 2012; Shively, 2008; Shively & Cohen, 2008; Tanner, 2012 a, 2012b; Zampini, 1994). Like these studies, the present study incorporates linguistic and extralinguistic variables, but this time focusing on Spanish /l/ acquisition in native English speakers. Furthermore, the present study investigates L2 lateral liquid /l/ acquisition by comparing L2 results with previously established L1 research of /l/. Reviewing a variety of SLA phonological research in a wide range of contexts, I include in this study nine independent variables based on syllabic context, phonetic context, level of learning, task type, and motivational intensity. The L2 Spanish /l/ data came from digitally recorded speech samples from 21 L2 Spanish speakers and were compared with a benchmark established by similar recordings from two L1 English and two L1 Spanish speakers. All participated in conversational and reading tasks, and all the L2 participants completed a background questionnaire for demographic and linguistic experience data and the Survey of Motivational Intensity (Gardner, 1985) to measure individual motivational intensities to learn Spanish. From these data, target-like /l/ acquisition was determined by acoustically derived formant measurements and tested for significance in a variety of variables. Of the independent variables, syllabic context proved to be collinear with vowels preceding and following /l/ and motivational intensity was not statistically significant. Moreover, the results prove that syllabic context, certain preceding and following phonetic segments, level of learning, and task type all have a significant effect on successful L2 Spanish /l/ acquisition.