Self-reported L2 input predicts phonetic variation in the adaptation of English final consonants into Italian

Italian native speakers often produce short, schwalike vowels at the end of consonant-final loanwords from English. While past studies on these paragogic vowels investigated intra-speaker variation and looked at factors such as stress, voicing or intonation contours, the present study focuses on variation between speakers. We test the hypothesis that the amount of received native English input predicts how often Italians produce paragogic vowels in English loanwords, with less input causing more inserted vowels. L2 input was estimated on the basis of a questionnaire on the active use and passive exposure to English. Twenty-one Italian native speakers with varying levels of English filled out this questionnaire and took part in an irregular-plural elicitation task containing consonant-final loanwords from English. Our results show that Italian speakers with a higher self-reported level of English exposure produce fewer paragogic vowels, thereby confirming our hypothesis.