Italian vowel production by Arabic speakers

This research wants to explore the production of Italian L2 vowels by native Arabic adult speakers living in Italy. It focuses, moreover, on the weight exerted by motivation on L2 speech. Accuracy in Italian L2 production is tested on two vowel oppositions, /i e/ and /o u/. First, with the purpose of judging the magnitude of spectral differences produced between /i e/ and /o u/, Euclidean distances between each opposition are calculated and compared, both for the Arabic speakers and an Italian control group. Then, spectral distances between Italian L1 and L2 B1-B0 and B3-B2 values are computed and examined in correlation with Arabic speakers’ motivational indexes.