This study investigates the interrelationship of phonological similarity between L1 and L2, transfer, and markedness as they relate to the acquisition of English /ε/ and /æ/ by native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. Transfer and markedness adequately account for the behavior of poorer learners, but these factors do not explain the rate of acquisition of the two sounds as assessed by global foreign accent: Whereas /æ/ accuracy increased as global accent improved, /ε/ accuracy decreased. It is suggested that phonetic and phonological similarity between L1 and L2 are important factors which motivated overgeneralization or interaction of /ε/ and /æ/ within the inter-language.
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Roy C. Major (1987) studied this question.
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