Native and non-native production of Estonian quantity degrees: comparison of Estonian, Finnish and Russian subjects

In the study the native (L1) production of Estonian quantity degrees is compared to the non-native (L2) production by two groups of subjects with different language backgrounds – Finnish (L2-FI) and Russian (L2-RU). Estonian and Finnish are typical examples of quantity languages both exploiting the duration cue contrastively. However, there are significant differences in the quantity systems of the two languages – binary opposition in Finnish vs. ternary opposition in Estonian. In Russian there are no duration based phonological contrasts, instead duration acts as the main cue for word stress.