The previous findings have suggested that perceptual difficulties are attributed to the size and complexity of the L1–L2 vowel systems. This study aims to investigate the perception and production of the English /ɪ/–/iː/ vowel contrast by Cypriot Greek (henceforth, CG) speakers of L2 English. There is a need to examine the acquisition of L2 contrasts by listeners with various-including under-researched-varieties to better define the speech acquisition processes and mechanisms. This is particularly evident for sounds or sound contrasts that are absent from the speakers’ L1. Problematic perception is believed to lead to problematic production, which appears in the form of accented speech. It has been proposed that this difficulty results from continuous exposure to a specific language (i.e., first language L1) that changes the way non-native speech sounds are perceived. The inadequacy of adult speakers in accurately perceiving the sounds of a second language (L2) has been described in many recent studies. Finally, the study verifies UPM’s predictions about the discriminability of the contrast and extends the model’s implications to speech production when an L2 vowel contrast is perceived as completely overlapping, speakers activate a (near-) unified interlinguistic exemplar in their vowel space, which represents both L2 vowels. This distinction is difficult even for experienced L2 speakers probably because they had never been exposed to naturalistic L2 stimuli and they do not use the L2 that much in their daily life. The findings suggest that /ɪ/–/iː/ may carry a universal marker of difficulty for speakers with L1s that do not possess this contrast. In addition, their productions deviated in most acoustic parameters from the corresponding productions of English controls. The results showed that they classified both L2 /ɪ/–/iː/ mostly in terms of L1 /i/, which denotes the formation of a completely overlapping contrast according to the theoretical framework of the Universal Perceptual Model (UPM), and that they could hardly distinguish the vowel pair. The participants completed a classification test in which they classified the L2 vowels in terms of their first language (L1) categories, a discrimination test in which they distinguished the members of the vowel contrast, and a production test in which they produced the target vowels. This study aims to investigate the perception and production of the English /ɪ/–/iː/ vowel contrast by Cypriot Greek speakers of English as a second language (L2).
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