Interplay between perceived cross-linguistic similarity and L2 production Analyzing the L2 vowel patterns of bilinguals

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between perceived cross-linguistic similarity and second language (L2) production. To this purpose, Egyptian Arabic learners of Greek in Cyprus who took part in a previous cross-linguistic perceptual study, completed a production test with respect to the Cypriot Greek vowels. The findings showed that perceived cross-linguistic similarity was linked with L2 production since along with the consideration of first language (L1)-L2 acoustic differences, it predicted most of the L2 vowel productions. Also, many L2 vowels were considerably longer than the corresponding L1 vowels. This can be interpreted as an L1 transfer since Egyptian Arabic vowels are longer in duration than the Cypriot Greek vowels. An interesting finding was that the production of the L2 vowels had only partial overlap with the productions of the L1 vowels, a finding that provides support for the hypotheses of the Speech Learning Model.