GOMES, Almir Anacleto de Araújo.; LUCENA, Rubens Marques de.
Resumen:
This study aims to describe the variable process of inserting the epenthetic vowel [ɪ] in words
beginning with /sC/ clusters at onset position in English by Brazilian learners of English as a
second language (L2). This work is based on research conducted regarding this phenomenon
such as: Escartín (2005) with Hispanic learners of English and Cardoso (2004, 2008, 2009). The
research corpus is composed of data from 18 Brazilian learners of English as L2, distributed in
basic, intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency. The independent variables are learner’s
level of proficiency and phonological awareness in the FL, sonority of the second element of the
cluster, preceding phonological context and instrument type of data collection. The statistical
analysis shows, in decreasing order of significance, that the sonority of the cluster, the learner’s
level of proficiency, the learner’s phonological awareness, and the preceding context of the
cluster are the most relevant variables to the realization of onset vowel epenthesis in sC clusters.
