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Phonological processes across word and language boundaries: Evidence from code-switching
Abstract
Previous research on the phonetics and phonology of code-switching has largely focused on word internal phenomenon, such as voice onset time. However, many phonological processes occur across word boundaries, and in the case of code-switching, potentially across language boundaries. This study examines the application of phonological rules across word and language boundaries in cases of code-switching, exploiting cross-linguistic differences in voicing assimilation and spirantization processes in English and Spanish. Results from an oral production paradigm conducted with Spanish–English bilinguals showed an asymmetrical impact of code-switching: switched and non-switched tokens differed in Spanish, but not English. A similar pattern was found for bilinguals of different language dominance profiles. This asymmetry is discussed with respect to the different language-specific degrees of variability in production. Moreover, results from the current study suggest that while phonological processes may be anchored to language-specific lexical items or phonemes, the licensing environment is language non-specific.
... It is thus difficult (or perhaps impossible) to draw strong conclusions about how a bilingual's languages impact each other without considering the specific factors that impact activation, thereby engendering the following question: If no evidence for cross-language influence is found, is it because such patterns are not present in the speech community, or because the L1 (or L2) was minimally activated in the examined communicative context? In order to investigate this and similar questions, researchers such as Amengual (2018), Antoniou et al. (2011), Bullock and Toribio (2009), and Olson (2016aOlson ( , 2016bOlson ( , 2019 have implemented experimental paradigms that manipulate the relative levels of activation of a bilingual's two languages through tasks that either inhibit or induce code-switching. While code-switching occurs naturally in bilingual speech, inducing these switches experimentally enables researchers to more directly investigate how a bilingual's languages interact in contexts that require maximal cognitive activation of both grammars. ...
... Language context is the situational or environmental demand for specific language content, which we measure through the amount of linguistic material drawn from a bilingual speaker's languages (e.g., Olson 2013). Through a controlled study, we can manipulate the language context while holding constant additional factors that may influence where bilingual speakers find themselves on the language-mode continuum (e.g., the identity of interlocutors, the topic of conversation, the communicative environment; see Antoniou et al. 2011;Olson 2019). On the one hand, placing speakers in an experimentally-induced language context where only one language is used allows for maximal activation of a single language, and minimal activation of the other language, known as a unilingual mode (with the caveat that inducing a purely unilingual mode may prove impossible; see Amengual 2018;Freeman et al. in press;Simonet 2014). ...
... On the one hand, placing speakers in an experimentally-induced language context where only one language is used allows for maximal activation of a single language, and minimal activation of the other language, known as a unilingual mode (with the caveat that inducing a purely unilingual mode may prove impossible; see Amengual 2018;Freeman et al. in press;Simonet 2014). Conversely, placing listeners in a language context where linguistic material is drawn from both languages, such as code-switching, will likely induce a bilingual mode with both languages activated simultaneously (e.g., Amengual 2018;Antoniou et al. 2011;Olson 2019;Simonet 2014). ...
The present study examines the relationship between the two grammars of bilingual speakers, the linguistic ecologies in which the L1 and L2 become active, and how these topics can be explored in a bilingual community undergoing L1 attrition. Our experiment focused on the production of intervocalic phonemic voiced stops for L1-Afrikaans/L2-Spanish bilinguals in Patagonia, Argentina. While these phonemes undergo systematic intervocalic lenition in Spanish (e.g., /b d ɡ/ > [β ð ɣ]), they do not in Afrikaans (e.g., /b d/ > [b d]). The bilingual participants in our study produced target Afrikaans and Spanish words in unilingual and code-switched speaking contexts. The results show that: (i) the participants produce separate phonetic categories in Spanish and Afrikaans; (ii) code-switching affects the production of the target sounds asymmetrically, such that L1 Afrikaans influences the production of L2 Spanish sounds but not vice versa; and (iii) this L1-to-L2 influence remains robust despite the instability of the L1 itself. Altogether, our findings speak to the persistence of a bilingual’s L1 phonological grammar despite cross-generational L1 attrition.
... While these cut-off points are somewhat arbitrary, as language dominance is gradient in nature (Birdsong 2014), they were established with reference to cut-off points in prior literature. In comparison to prior studies that have used such cutoffs (e.g., Black et al. 2020;Olson 2019), those in the current study are considered to be conservative, limiting the range around zero for the balanced bilingual group (for discussion of cutoff selection, see Treffers-Daller 2016). For convenience, these groups are termed as Spanish-dominant, Balanced, and English-dominant. ...
While language dominance has been crucial in the study of bilingualism, recent research has called for more detailed measures to systematically account for the observation that bilinguals use different languages in different domains, a phenomenon formalized in the Complementary Principle. Few studies have systematically measured these language–domain relationships. Addressing these gaps, this study employs a novel, mixed-methods approach to identify the links between domain (i.e., topic) and language and to examine the effect of language dominance on language–domain relationships. Spanish–English bilinguals in the U.S. ( N = 443) responded to open-ended prompts about the topics they discuss in each of their two languages and when code-switching. A qualitative thematic analysis was used to identify relevant topic categories and examine the relationships between topic and language. Subsequent analysis examined variability in language-domain mappings of bilinguals from across the language dominance continuum. Results showed that Spanish was most associated with topics of family and day-to-day life and English with academics and work. Little differentiation in language–domain mappings was found between English-dominant, Spanish-dominant, and balanced bilinguals. Findings are discussed with a focus on the methodological contributions and the implications for integrating the Complementary Principle in measures of language dominance.
... This asymmetry as a function of language dominance seems to be persistent, as shown in other studies that investigate language mode and codeswitching effects in bilingual speech (Amengual, 2018(Amengual, , 2021Olson, 2017Olson, , 2019Simonet, 2014;Tsui, Tong, & Chan, 2019). For example, Amengual (2018) examined the effects of language mode on the acoustic realization of Spanish and English laterals by four groups of Spanish-English bilinguals that differed in their degree of language dominance in three different sessions (monolingual English, monolingual Spanish, and bilingual English/Spanish). ...
Bilingualism and the study of speech sounds are two of the largest areas of inquiry in linguistics. This Handbook sits at the intersection of these fields, providing a comprehensive overview of the most recent, cutting-edge work on the sound systems of adult and child bilinguals. Bringing together contributions from an international team of world-leading experts, it covers all aspects of the speech perception, production and processing of bilingual individuals, as well as surveying cross-linguistic influences on the phonetics and phonology of bilingualism. The thirty-five chapters are divided into thematic areas covering the theoretical foundations and methodological approaches employed to investigate bilingual speech, overviews of major findings and developments in child and adult bilingual phonology and phonetics, descriptions of the major areas of research within the speech perception, production and processing of the bilingual individual, and examinations of various predictors of cross-linguistic influence and variables affecting the outcomes of bilingual speech.
... As per the review of 27 languages by McLeod and Crowe (2018), the most commonly reported phonological processes across languages are stopping, fronting of velar sounds, assimilation, gliding of liquids, weak syllable deletion (WSD), voicing errors, deaffrication, and cluster reduction. Commonly cited phonological processes in the speech pathology literature and in the cross-linguistic research echo the above (McLeod, 2016;Olson, 2019;Puspitasari & Subiyanto, 2020). As Kopkalli-Yavuz and Topbas (1998) assert, a process may be "normal in one language but unusual in another" (p. ...
Purpose
A well-established set of language-specific norms for phonological development is imperative in the assessment of child speech sound difficulties. Currently, English norms are used clinically (in the absence of norms for local languages) to determine if a child displays age-appropriate, delayed or disordered speech patterns in Sinhala. This preliminary exploratory study aimed to document phonological processes observed in typically developing Sinhala-speaking children aged 3;0–6;11 (years;months).
Method
The Test of Articulation and Phonology–Sinhala, a picture-based assessment, was devised by the researchers and administered to 102 Sinhala-speaking children from three geographical locations (Colombo, Kandy, and Gampaha). The quantitative measures included percent consonants correct, percent vowels correct, and percent phonemes correct, while the qualitative analysis identified phonological processes.
Results
The quantitative results showed a marked influence of age on phoneme production accuracy with over 75% consonants correct by 3 years 6 months. The qualitative findings demonstrate common typical phonological processes and less common phonological processes in Sinhala compared to the speech pathology and cross-linguistic literature. Common phonological processes included fronting, stopping, and weak syllable deletion widely documented in linguistic and speech-language pathology literature. Many shared phonological processes were observed between Sinhala and Sri Lankan Tamil, the two main local languages, including fronting of retroflex sounds and lateralization. The phonological process of denasalization of prenasalized stops was observed in Sinhala, with no documentation of the phonological process found within the mainstream speech-language pathology literature.
Conclusion and Implications
These findings reinforce the need to document and use language-specific typical phonological processes in Sinhala given the implications for early and accurate identification of speech difficulties and intervention.
Supplemental Material
https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.27068173
... The phrase in (8) with a Spanish light verb would be produced with Spanish phonological phrasing with the main verb and the complement in separate phonological phrases (where // indicates a phonological phrase boundary). To summarize, we have seen that the functional head (like v) dictates the uniformity of the phonology of the word (as in (5b)), and the sentential phonology as in (8), (see also Olson, 2019;Hendrickson et al., 2021 who demonstrate code-switched post-lexical phonology), but the functional head is blind to the source language of the segmental phonology. For example the requirements of Spanish hizo can be satisfied with German Hemd). ...
While the properties of bilingual codeswitching are well-documented, and switching morphology within words is often addressed, the properties of intraword phonology are less-understood. Morphemes from more than one language occur within a single word (e.g., a root from one language and affixes from the other). Furthermore, the affixes come only from the language which generates the syntactic tree while the root can be taken from either language. The data also strongly suggest that within such a morphologically mixed word, the phonology does not switch, a property I refer to as phonological uniformity. The key question explored in this paper is: why is phonological mixing in a morphologically mixed word not allowed? I first present evidence that there is phonological activation of both languages even in a monolingual task such as a Lexical Decision Task or silent reading which is consistent with an integrated I-phonological grammar. I provide a reanalysis of some fascinating data from Delgado et al. (2022) in arguing against a phase-based account of phonological uniformity. The mechanism which ensures that the phonology of the X 0 matches the language of the affixes is Match Theory (Selkirk, 2011). The preferential mapping is between (a) syntactic phrases (XPs) and phonological phrases (), and (b) syntactic heads (X 0 s) and prosodic words (). Match Theory's (monolingual) assumption that syntactic and phonological structure are isomorphic can easily be extended to bilinguals through language tags (Green & Abutalebi, 2013). I recast the Match Theory machinery within the framework of Co-phonologies (Sande, Jenks & Inkelas, 2020). In order to account for the differential behaviour of determiners in codeswitched simple DPs (e.g. the mesa) versus codeswitched complex DPs (e.g. the brown mesa) I show how a combination of the notion of the head of the phonological phrase, the free (as opposed to affixal) clitic status of the English determiner, and the parsing of an English vocabulary item via the Spanish contrastive hierarchy explains the phonological properties observed. A Null Theory phonological account of phonological uniformity is argued to be preferred over a phase-based account.
... For example, effects of code-switching on VOT are more likely to be found in long-lag languages (e.g., English), which have a greater acceptable range of productions than those with more restrictive ranges (e.g., Spanish; e.g., González López, 2012). Parallels have been found in research on phonological rule application at the point of switch, in which effects are found where rule application is variable (e.g., Olson, 2019). In short, greater variability in non-switched speech for a given feature provides a fertile ground for observing phonetic interference. ...
Aims and objectives
While previous research on code-switching, defined as the alternation between two languages in a single interaction, has focused on syntactic sociopragmatic patterns, significantly less work has focused on the impact of code-switching on phonetics. Distinct types of code-switching have been previously identified, with the distinction between intersentential and intrasentential code-switches being among the most basic. Yet, existing work on the phonetics of code-switching has largely relied on single feature (i.e., voice onset time) and has exclusively examined one type of code-switch (i.e., intrasentential). The current study investigates the potential for cross-linguistic interference in vowel production and examines the potential role of different code-switch types: intersentential and intrasentential code-switching.
Design/Methodology
Thirty-seven Korean–English bilinguals participated in a controlled reading paradigm, producing monolingual English, monolingual Korean, intersentential code-switches, and intrasentential code-switches.
Data and analysis
Analysis leveraged differences in the Korean and English vowel inventories and focused on the production of English [æ] and the corresponding Korean vowel [e~ε].
Findings/Conclusions
Results indicated that code-switched English vowels shifted in the direction of Korean vowels with respect to both height and backness. Code-switch type was shown to be significant, with a greater degree of vowel shift for intrasentential than intersentential code-switching.
Originality
This study adds to the limited prior literature examining the effect of code-switching on vowel quality and is one of the first studies to systematically examine the role of code-switching typology on cross-linguistic interference in the phonetic domain.
Significance/Implications
First, this study adds to the limited prior research that specifically examines the effect of code-switching on phonetic production of vowel quality. Second, this study highlights the nuances of short-term cross-linguistic interference, and notably the possibility for differential outcomes of interference across different linguistic domains (e.g., phonetics and syntax), showing a clear role for code-switching typology at the phonetic level.
... 110) For instance, the better universities around the world speak English and that motivates people to learn the language. Consequently, the author further added that many nations have in recent years made English an official language or chosen as their chief foreign language in schools, one of the most important reasons is of course education [9]. ...
The present research is expected to cover an investigation with the following topic “Code-switching and the English language” which essentially investigates the relationship between the variables and how students are affected by code-switching during their academic performance. The present research study was conducted for 3 months, 5 h a week. This investigation was lead and coordinated by applying the quali-quantitative approach in validated surveys that allows the examiner to know the relationship between the variables. The subjects of the examination were all the “Unidad Profesionalizante” Fourth to Seventh-semester university students and teachers of the “Carrera de Idiomas” at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. To evaluate the efficacy of this study all the data was collected and analyzed in the IBM SPSS software to get the results as genuine and assertive as possible. To verify the hypothesis of the present research paper, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied to measure the sample data and to get the genuine sample results. Discerning the results of the present investigation the conclusion is drawn as the following. ESL students are influenced by code-switching when learning or teaching the target language. Consequently, code-switching (English-Spanish) during an English lesson is greatly beneficial for ESL students’ academic performance.
... Several studies have found evidence of unidirectional transfer at the point of switch (Antoniou et al. 2011;Balukas and Koops 2015;Bullock et al. 2006), with Language A shifting in the direction of Language B, but Language B failing to show evidence of transfer. Other studies have found bidirectional transfer (Bullock and Toribio 2009;González-López 2012;Olson 2016;Schwartz et al. 2015), with Language A shifting in the direction of Language B and Language B shifting in the direction of Language A (for an account of unidirectional vs. bidirectional transfer, see Olson (2019)). This cross-linguistic phonetic influence has been found across a variety of paradigms, including naturalistic (e.g., Balukas and Koops 2015) and read speech (e.g., Antoniou et al. 2011), and for different types of code-switches (e.g., for single-word insertions, see Olson (2016); for alternational code-switching, see Bullock and Toribio (2009)). ...
While previous research has shown that bilinguals are able to effectively maintain two sets of phonetic norms, these two phonetic systems experience varying degrees of cross-linguistic influence, driven by both long-term (e.g., proficiency, immersion) and short-term (e.g., bilingual language contexts, code-switching, sociolinguistic) factors. This study examines the potential for linguistic environment, or the language norms of the broader community in which an interaction takes place, to serve as a source of short-term cross-linguistic phonetic influence. To investigate the role of linguistic environment, late bilinguals (L1 English—L2 Spanish) produced Spanish utterances in two sessions that differed in their linguistic environments: an English-dominant linguistic environment (Indiana, USA) and a Spanish-dominant linguistic environment (Madrid, Spain). Productions were analyzed at the fine-grained acoustic level, through an acoustic analysis of voice onset time, as well as more holistically through native speaker global accent ratings. Results showed that linguistic environment did not significantly impact either measure of phonetic production, regardless of a speaker’s second language proficiency. These results, in conjunction with previous results on long- and short-term sources of phonetic influence, suggest a possible primacy of the immediate context of an interaction, rather than broader community norms, in determining language mode and cross-linguistic influence.
Bilingualism and the study of speech sounds are two of the largest areas of inquiry in linguistics. This Handbook sits at the intersection of these fields, providing a comprehensive overview of the most recent, cutting-edge work on the sound systems of adult and child bilinguals. Bringing together contributions from an international team of world-leading experts, it covers all aspects of the speech perception, production and processing of bilingual individuals, as well as surveying cross-linguistic influences on the phonetics and phonology of bilingualism. The thirty-five chapters are divided into thematic areas covering the theoretical foundations and methodological approaches employed to investigate bilingual speech, overviews of major findings and developments in child and adult bilingual phonology and phonetics, descriptions of the major areas of research within the speech perception, production and processing of the bilingual individual, and examinations of various predictors of cross-linguistic influence and variables affecting the outcomes of bilingual speech.
Bilingualism and the study of speech sounds are two of the largest areas of inquiry in linguistics. This Handbook sits at the intersection of these fields, providing a comprehensive overview of the most recent, cutting-edge work on the sound systems of adult and child bilinguals. Bringing together contributions from an international team of world-leading experts, it covers all aspects of the speech perception, production and processing of bilingual individuals, as well as surveying cross-linguistic influences on the phonetics and phonology of bilingualism. The thirty-five chapters are divided into thematic areas covering the theoretical foundations and methodological approaches employed to investigate bilingual speech, overviews of major findings and developments in child and adult bilingual phonology and phonetics, descriptions of the major areas of research within the speech perception, production and processing of the bilingual individual, and examinations of various predictors of cross-linguistic influence and variables affecting the outcomes of bilingual speech.
The present study investigates the extent to which code-switching experience modulates short-term cross-linguistic phonetic interference. Three experiments were conducted, each examining a different acoustic parameter in the context of code-switching, a dual language paradigm previously shown to enhance cross-linguistic phonetic interference. Bilinguals’ prior experience with code-switching was assessed using the Bilingual Code-Switching Profile. In Experiment 1, Korean–English bilinguals’ productions of F1 and F2 for the code-switched English vowel /æ/ were compared to monolingual (i.e., non-switched) Korean /e/ and English /æ/. While code-switched English vowels shifted in the direction of monolingual Korean vowels, the results suggest that bilinguals with more code-switching experience exhibited reduced cross-linguistic interference relative to those with less experience. In Experiments 2 and 3, Spanish–English bilinguals’ productions of fricative voicing (Experiment 2) and spirantization of intervocalic voiced stops (Experiment 3) in Spanish and English code-switched tokens were compared to monolingual tokens. Results suggest that participants with greater code-switching experience produced less evidence of cross-linguistic phonetic interference for both fricative voicing and intervocalic spirantization. Collectively, and suggesting a role for executive control mechanisms at the phonetic level, these findings illustrate that code-switching experience serves to mitigate short-term cross-linguistic interference.
This article presents an overview of recent research on the phonetics of early bilinguals, individuals who have acquired both of their languages early in life, by either growing up being exposed to two languages since birth (i.e., simultaneous bilinguals) or having initially learned their first language with the second language introduced at a later stage during their childhood (i.e., early sequential or successive/consecutive bilinguals). This review puts forth empirical evidence from methodologically and theoretically diverse studies on the phonetics of early bilingualism and considers explanations for the observed patterns of cross-linguistic influence on the production, perception, and processing of sounds in both of their languages. Throughout, this article discusses the critical significance of early linguistic experience on bilingual speech patterns, how early-onset bilinguals perceive speech sounds in each language, bilinguals’ phonetic abilities when producing language-specific segmental and suprasegmental features, and the dynamic nature of cross-language sound interactions in early bilingual speech.
While much of the existing literature on code-switching focuses on languages that differ typologically, this dissertation focuses on typologically similar languages. Code-switching between Mandarin and Taiwanese is examined through the perspectives of 1) sociolinguistics, 2) typology, 3) phonetic and phonological production, and 4) speech perception. Sociolinguistically, a questionnaire that examined usage domains and sociolinguistic perception revealed that Mandarin-Taiwanese code-switching is predominantly used in informal situations with social equals. Moreover, despite Taiwanese being a low-prestige language in Taiwan, Mandarin-Taiwanese code-switching is perceived positively and associated with solidarity. For the typological and phonetic/phonological investigations, a Mandarin-Taiwanese bilingual corpus containing approximately 11.6 hours of spontaneous speech was built. It was found that typologically, Mandarin-Taiwanese code-switching patterns can be affected by the sociolinguistic standings of the languages, the lexical gaps in the languages, a speaker’s language dominance level, and the dominant language of the conversation. For the phonetic and phonological analyses, the production of Mandarin Tone 3 (T3) at code-switching boundary was examined to determine if speech production is affected by the relative level of language activation. On the phonetic level, code-switching boundary T3 contour is reduced when using monolingual language mode (i.e., speaking monolingually), and shows more variability when using bilingual language mode (i.e., speaking bilingually), suggesting a difference in language activation patterns in the code-switching in monolingual vs. bilingual language modes. On the phonological level, cross-language Mandarin T3 sandhi is more rule-governed when Mandarin is the matrix language of the code-switching utterance, revealing higher phonological control of sounds from the language at a higher level of activation. For the perception examination, a reaction time experiment was conducted to explore the perceptual cues of Mandarin-Taiwanese code-switching on the code-switched word. The results show that Mandarin-Taiwanese bilinguals are more sensitive to language-specific phonetic properties that occur earlier in the word, i.e., onset and nucleus.
ICL2021 was the 24th edition of the International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning and the 50th edition of the IGIP International Conference on Engineering Pedagogy.
This interdisciplinary conference aims to focus on the exchange of relevant trends and research results as well as the presentation of practical experiences in Interactive Collaborative Learning and Engineering Pedagogy.
ICL2021 has been organized by Technische Universität Dresden and University of Applied Science Dresden, Germany, from September 22 to 24, 2021, as a hybrid event.
This year’s theme of the conference was “Mobility for Smart Cities and Regional Development – Challenges for Higher Education”.
This present research is expected to describe the relationship between “codeswitching and the communicative competence,” considering the switching from English to Spanish in EFL classrooms. The present study was conducted in about 3.5 months and 5 h per week. This examination was coordinated using a qualitative-quantitative methodology by administering a validated questionnaire to about one hundred and forty respondents from the target population. The purpose of this questionnaire was to analyze the usage of codeswitching and its contribution to the communicative competence. The subjects of the questionnaire were university students of the first, second and third semesters and teachers of the Pedagogy of National and Foreign Languages (PINE) program at the Technical University of Ambato. To analyze all the data collected efficiently the IBM SPSS software was used to obtain the most genuine and assertive results. Thinking about the results of the present investigation, it can be seen that the use of codeswitching in ELF classrooms aids the communicative competence, since students see codeswitching as a tool that allows them to have a better communication both between classmates and with their teachers together.
Psychologists must be able to test both for the presence of an effect and for the absence of an effect. In addition to testing against zero, researchers can use the two one-sided tests (TOST) procedure to test for equivalence and reject the presence of a smallest effect size of interest (SESOI). The TOST procedure can be used to determine if an observed effect is surprisingly small, given that a true effect at least as extreme as the SESOI exists. We explain a range of approaches to determine the SESOI in psychological science and provide detailed examples of how equivalence tests should be performed and reported. Equivalence tests are an important extension of the statistical tools psychologists currently use and enable researchers to falsify predictions about the presence, and declare the absence, of meaningful effects.
Psychologists must be able to test both for the presence of an effect and for the absence of an effect. In addition to testing against zero, researchers can use the two one-sided tests (TOST) procedure to test for equivalence and reject the presence of a smallest effect size of interest (SESOI). The TOST procedure can be used to determine if an observed effect is surprisingly small, given that a true effect at least as extreme as the SESOI exists. We explain a range of approaches to determine the SESOI in psychological science and provide detailed examples of how equivalence tests should be performed and reported. Equivalence tests are an important extension of the statistical tools psychologists currently use and enable researchers to falsify predictions about the presence, and declare the absence, of meaningful effects.
The aim of our research is to understand how speech learning changes over the life span and to explain why "earlier is better" as far as learning to pronounce a second language (L2) is concerned. An assumption we make is that the phonetic systems used in the production and perception of vowels and consonants remain adaptiive over the life span, and that phonetic systems reorganize in response to sounds encountered in an L2 through the addition of new phonetic categories, or through the modification of old ones. The chapter is organized in the following way. Several general hypotheses concerning the cause of foreign accent in L2 speech production are summarized in the introductory section. In the next section, a model of L2 speech learning that aims to account for age-related changes in L2 pronunciation is presented. The next three sections present summaries of empirical research dealing with the production and perception of L2 vowels, word-initial consonants, and word-final consonants. The final section discusses questions of general theoretical interest, with special attention to a featural (as opposed to a segmental) level of analysis. Although nonsegmental (i.e., prosodic) dimensions are an important source of foreign accent, the present chapter focuses on phoneme-sized units of speech. Although many different languages are learned as an L2, the focus is on the acquisition of English.
Psychologists must be able to test both for the presence of an effect and for the absence of an effect. In addition to testing against zero, researchers can use the two one-sided tests (TOST) procedure to test for equivalence and reject the presence of a smallest effect size of interest (SESOI). The TOST procedure can be used to determine if an observed effect is surprisingly small, given that a true effect at least as extreme as the SESOI exists. We explain a range of approaches to determine the SESOI in psychological science and provide detailed examples of how equivalence tests should be performed and reported. Equivalence tests are an important extension of the statistical tools psychologists currently use and enable researchers to falsify predictions about the presence, and declare the absence, of meaningful effects.
Scientists should be able to provide support for the absence of a meaningful effect. Currently, researchers often incorrectly conclude an effect is absent based a nonsignificant result. A widely recommended approach within a frequentist framework is to test for equivalence. In equivalence tests, such as the two one-sided tests (TOST) procedure discussed in this article, an upper and lower equivalence bound is specified based on the smallest effect size of interest. The TOST procedure can be used to statistically reject the presence of effects large enough to be considered worthwhile. This practical primer with accompanying spreadsheet and R package enables psychologists to easily perform equivalence tests (and power analyses) by setting equivalence bounds based on standardized effect sizes and provides recommendations to prespecify equivalence bounds. Extending your statistical tool kit with equivalence tests is an easy way to improve your statistical and theoretical inferences.
The " fraction of locally unvoiced frames " measure in Praat's Voice Report (VR) is an automated method of obtaining the percentage of a segment which is voiced, but its accuracy has been called into question due to values that change based on scrolling and zooming in Praat's viewing window and don't always match manual voicing segmentation. This study offers statistical support for the accuracy of VR when certain guidelines are followed: (1) use the object window; (2) decrease the time step to increase temporal resolution; and (3) use gender-specific pitch ranges. The closure and frication portions of 277 affricates were analyzed using VR in this way and the results were compared to manual voicing segmentation using paired Wilcoxon tests. The results show that there is no significant difference between VR and manual segmentation, regardless of whether only the closure portion, only the frication portion, or the entire affricate is considered.
We present a test of a revised version of the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model, a computational model of the acquisition of second language (L2) speech perception and recognition. The model draws on phonetic, phonological, and psycholinguistic constructs to explain a number of L2 learning scenarios. However, a recent computational implementation failed to validate a theoretical proposal for a learning scenario where the L2 has less phonemic categories than the native language (L1) along a given acoustic continuum. According to the L2LP, learners faced with this learning scenario must not only shift their old L1 phoneme boundaries but also reduce the number of categories employed in perception. Our proposed revision to L2LP successfully accounts for this updating in the number of perceptual categories as a process driven by the meaning of lexical items, rather than by the learners' awareness of the number and type of phonemes that are relevant in their new language, as the previous version of L2LP assumed. Results of our simulations show that meaning-driven learning correctly predicts the developmental path of L2 phoneme perception seen in empirical studies. Additionally, and to contribute to a long-standing debate in psycholinguistics, we test two versions of the model, with the stages of phonemic perception and lexical recognition being either sequential or interactive. Both versions succeed in learning to recognize minimal pairs in the new L2, but make diverging predictions on learners' resulting phonological representations. In sum, the proposed revision to the L2LP model contributes to our understanding of L2 acquisition, with implications for speech processing in general.
Research on the phonetics of code-switching has focused on voice onset time (VOT) and has yielded mixed results regarding cross-language interaction, possibly due to differences in data used (scripted vs. spontaneous speech) and populations examined (L1 vs. L2 dominant, early vs. late bilinguals). Here VOT was measured in a corpus of spontaneous code-switching speech elicited from a homogeneous group of early bilinguals in conversation with and without distraction (completion of jigsaw puzzles). The distraction meant to increase cognitive load, a manipulation that could affect phonetic realization. Both English and Spanish VOT were shorter at code-switching points than in comparable monolingual utterances. English VOT lengthened overall under increased cognitive load (but remained shorter in code-switching as compared to the monolingual context). These results support previous findings of VOT shortening in code-switching for both English and Spanish, and confirm that the effect applies in the natural speech of early bilinguals.
Description Fit linear and generalized linear mixed-effects models. The models and their components are represented using S4 classes and methods. The core computational algorithms are implemented using the 'Eigen' C++ library for numerical linear algebra and 'RcppEigen' ``glue''.
Acoustic phonetic studies examine the L1 of Polish speakers with professional level proficiency in English. The studies include two tasks, a production task carried out entirely in Polish and a phonetic code-switching task in which speakers insert target Polish words or phrases into an English carrier. Additionally, two phonetic parameters are studied: the oft-investigated VOT, as well as glottalization vs. sandhi linking of word-initial vowels. In monolingual Polish mode, L2 interference was observed for the VOT parameter, but not for sandhi linking. It is suggested that this discrepancy may be related to the differing phonological status of the two phonetic parameters. In the code-switching tasks, VOTs were on the whole more English-like than in monolingual mode, but this appeared to be a matter of individual performance. An increase in the rate of sandhi linking in the code-switches, except for the case of one speaker, appeared to be a function of accelerated production of L1 target items.
Mixture of Spanish and English, whether in isolated loan words or in code-switching of clauses and sentences, while socially motivated, is subject to clear linguistic constraints. Quantitative analysis of mixing in conversations of Mexican-Americans suggests specific functional constraints to express tense/aspect/mood and subject/object relationships, as well as structural constraints which permit only surface structures which are grammatical in both languages. Resolution of structural conflict plays a key role, so that lexical cores trigger longer phrasal switches if they govern rules which create non-shared surface structures. The relative frequency of mixes without structural conflict is constrained by discourse function.
We examine the weakening of intervocalic voiceless stops in Spanish in order to gain insight on historical processes of intervocalic lenition. In our corpus, about a third of all tokens of intervocalic /ptk/ are fully or partially voiced in spontaneous speech. However, even when fully voiced, /ptk/ tend to show greater constriction than /bdg/, with the velars being less different than labials and coronals. Word-initial and word-internal intervocalic segments are equally affected. Based on our findings from acoustic measurements of correlates of lenition, we propose that common reductive sound changes, such as intervocalic consonant lenition, start as across-the-board conventionalized phonetic processes equally affecting all targets in the appropriate phonetic context. The common restriction of the sound change to word-internal contexts may be a consequence of phonological recategorization at a later stage in the sound change.
It is well known that multilingual speakers' nonnative productions are accented. Do these deviations from monolingual productions simply reflect the mislearning of nonnative sound categories, or can difficulties in processing speech sounds also contribute to a speaker's accent? Such difficulties are predicted by interactive theories of production, which propose that nontarget representations, partially activated during lexical access, influence phonetic processing. We examined this possibility using language switching, a task that is well known to disrupt multilingual speech production. We found that these disruptions extend to the articulation of individual speech sounds. When native Spanish speakers are required to unexpectedly switch the language of production between Spanish and English, their speech becomes more accented than when they do not switch languages (particularly for cognate targets). These findings suggest that accents reflect not only difficulty in acquiring second-language speech sounds but also the influence of representations partially activated during on-line speech processing.
Language experience systematically constrains perception of speech contrasts that deviate phonologically and/or phonetically from those of the listener's native language. These effects are most dramatic in adults, but begin to emerge in infancy and undergo further development through at least early childhood. The central question addressed here is: How do nonnative speech perception findings bear on phonological and phonetic aspects of second language (L2) perceptual learning? A frequent assumption has been that nonnative speech perception can also account for the relative difficulties that late learners have with specific L2 segments and contrasts. However, evaluation of this assumption must take into account the fact that models of nonnative speech perception such as the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) have focused primarily on naive listeners, whereas models of L2 speech acquisition such as the Speech Learning Model (SLM) have focused on experienced listeners. This chapter probes the assumption that L2 perceptual learning is determined by nonnative speech perception principles, by considering the commonalities and complementarities between inexperienced listeners and those learning an L2, as viewed from PAM and SUA. Among the issues examined are how language learning may affect perception of phonetic vs. phonological information, how monolingual vs. multiple language experience may impact perception, and what these may imply for attunement of speech perception to changes in the listener's language environment.
In this study we examined the effect of language experience on the production of second language (L2) allophones. We analysed production data of the Spanish stop—approximant alternation (b d g ~ β ð ) from Low Intermediate and High Intermediate level native English/Spanish L2 speakers and five native Mexican Spanish speakers. This allophonic alternation is conditioned primarily by position in the word and lexical stress. We examined the use of two cues to the alternation — consonant intensity and the presence of a release burst — and analysed how these cues varied in participants’ productions in distinct contexts. Results show that the use of these cues differs with experience; that is, learners with greater language experience exhibit cue use that is closer to the native speakers’ cue use. Results further suggest that Low Intermediate learners may be using a basic rule for producing the alternation, but that over time shift to a more nuanced production pattern. These results indicate that more experienced learners’ ability to use these phonetic cues in a native-like fashion emerges over the course of allophone acquisition.
This study compares phonetic implementation of the stop voicing contrast produced in Arabic by Saudi Arabians and by both Americans and Saudis in English. The English stops produced by Saudis manifested temporal acoustic correlates of stop voicing (VOT, stop closure duration, and vowel duration) similar to those found in Arabic stops. Despite such phonetic interference from Arabic to English, however, American listeners generally had little difficulty identifying the English stops produced by the Saudis, with the exception of /p/. This phoneme, which is absent in Arabic, was frequently produced with glottal pulsing during the stop closure interval. The timing of /p/, however, suggests that the Saudis did grasp the phonological nature of /p/ (i.e., that the contrast between /p—b/ is analogous to that between /t—d/ and /k—g/) but were unable to control all the articulatory dimensions by which this sound is produced.
This study evaluated the critical period hypothesis for second language (L2) acquisition. The participants were 240 native speakers of Korean who differed according to age of arrival (AOA) in the United States (1 to 23 years), but were all experienced in English (mean length of residence = 15 years). The native Korean participants' pronunciation of English was evaluated by having listeners rate their sentences for overall degree of foreign accent; knowledge of English morphosyntax was evaluated using a 144-item grammaticality judgment test. As AOA increased, the foreign accents grew stronger, and the grammaticality judgment test scores decreased steadily. However, unlike the case for the foreign accent ratings, the effect of AOA on the grammaticality judgment test scores became nonsignificant when variables confounded with AOA were controlled. This suggested that the observed decrease in morphosyntax scores was not the result of passing a maturationally defined critical period. Additional analyses showed that the score for sentences testing knowledge of rule based, generalizable aspects of English morphosyntax varied as a function of how much education the Korean participants had received in the United States. The scores for sentences testing lexically based aspects of English morphosyntax, on the other hand, depended on how much the Koreans used English.
The occurrence of codeswitching, or the seemingly random alternation of two languages both between and within sentences, has been shown (Gumperz, 1976; Pfaff, 1975; Wentz, 1977) to be governed not only by extralinguistic but also linguistic factors. For the balanced bilingual, codeswitching appears to be subject to an ‘equivalence constraint’ (Poplack, 1978): i.e. it tends to occur at points in discourse where juxtaposition of L1 and L2 elements does not violate a surface syntactic rule of either language. If correct, the equivalence constraint on codeswitching may be used to measure degree of bilingual ability. It was hypothesized that equivalence would either be violated by non-fluent bilinguals, or that switch points which are ‘risky’ in terms of syntactic well-formedness (i.e. those which occur within a sentence) would tend to be avoided altogether. To test this hypothesis, I analysed the speech of 20 Puerto Rican residents of a stable bilingual community, exhibiting varying degrees of bilingual ability. Quantitative analysis of their switches revealed that both fluent and non-fluent bilinguals were able to code-switch frequently and still maintain grammaticality in both Lx and L2. While fluent bilinguals tended to switch at various syntactic boundaries within the sentence, non-fluent bilinguals favoured switching between sentences, allowing them to participate in the codeswitching mode, without fear of violating a grammatical rule of either of the languages involved. These results suggest that the codeswitching mode proceeds from that area of the bilingual's grammar where the surface structures of Lx and L2 overlap, and that codeswitching, rather than representing debasement of linguistic skill, is actually a sensitive indicator of bilingual ability.
This paper reports on an acoustic experiment to investigate prosodic and segmental factors governing the degree of spirantization of intervocalic /g/ in Castilian Spanish. Significant variation in the degree of /g/-spirantization, measured here in terms of relative acoustic energy, is found to be conditioned by stress and the quality of the vowels adjacent to /g/. Spirantization is typically characterized as a process of weakening or articulatory reduction, and the experimental findings are considered in light of the view that reduction results from speech economy and/or gesture overlap. The observed effect of stress on spirantization is consistent with existing research that correlates gesture strength with the strength of the prosodic position in which the gesture occurs. The experimental results also indicate significant effects of vowel quality on the degree of spirantization, which conflict in part with the analysis of spirantization as a general phenomenon of intervocalic speech reduction. The findings suggest that a complete account of the variation in degree of spirantization must include consideration of the dynamics of the movement between specific consonant and vowel gestures.
Aims and Objectives
This study investigates the effects of code-switching on vowel quality, pitch and duration among English–French bilinguals. Code-switching has been claimed to influence the morphology, syntax and lexicon, but not the phonology of the switched language. However, studies on voice-onset time have found subtle phonetic effects of code-switching, even though there are no categorical phonological effects. We investigate this further through the following three questions: (1) Are F1 and F2 influenced in the process of code-switching? (2) Are code-switched words hyper-articulated? (3) Does code-switching have an effect on vowel duration before voiced and voiceless consonants?
Methodology
To address our research questions we relied on an insertional switching method where words from one language were inserted into carrier phrases of the other to simulate English–French code-switching environments. Bilingual speakers were recorded while they read code-switched sentences as well as sentences that did not involve code-switching, that is, monolingual sentences.
Data and Analysis
The vowels of target words in the recorded utterances were compared – code-switched contexts against monolingual contexts – for vocalic duration, F0, F1 and F2.
Findings/Conclusions
Like previous voice-onset time studies, our results indicate that code-switching does not shift the phonology to that of the embedded language. We did, however, find subtle lower level phonetic effects, especially in the French target words; we also found evidence of hyper-articulation in code-switched words. At the prosodic level, target switch-words approached the prosodic contours of the carrier phrases they are embedded in.
Originality
The approach taken in this study is novel for its investigation of vowel properties instead of voice-onset time.
Significance
This new approach to investigating code-switching adds to our understanding of how code-switching affects pronunciation.
The present study examines the effect of two potential catalysts for interlanguage phonetic interaction, code-switching and language mode, on the production of voice onset time (VOT) to better understand the role of (near) simultaneous dual language activation on phonetic production, as well as the nature of phonetic transfer. An oral production paradigm was carried out in which Spanish–English bilinguals produced words with initial voiceless stops as non-switched tokens, code-switched tokens in an otherwise monolingual context, and code-switched tokens in a bilingual context. Results demonstrated a degree of phonetic transfer associated with code-switching, either unidirectional or bi-directional. Specifically, English, with long lag VOT, was more susceptible to phonetic transfer than Spanish (short lag). Contrary to expectations, while the code-switching effect was present in both monolingual and bilingual mode, there was no additional transfer, or additive effect, of bilingual language mode. Differences in the effects of code-switching on English and Spanish are discussed with respect to the inherently different acceptable VOT ranges in the two languages. Furthermore, the lack of difference in VOT between the code-switched tokens in the monolingual and bilingual contexts is taken to suggest limits on phonetic transfer.
We exploit the unique phonetic properties of bilingual speech to ask how processes occurring during planning affect speech articulation, and whether listeners can use the phonetic modulations that occur in anticipation of a codeswitch to help restrict their lexical search to the appropriate language. An analysis of spontaneous bilingual codeswitching in the Bangor Miami Corpus (Deuchar, Davies, Herring, Parafita Couto, & Carter, 2014) reveals that in anticipation of switching languages, Spanish–English bilinguals produce slowed speech rate and cross-language phonological influence on consonant voice onset time. A study of speech comprehension using the visual world paradigm demonstrates that bilingual listeners can indeed exploit these low-level phonetic cues to anticipate that a codeswitch is coming and to suppress activation of the non-target language. We discuss the implications of these results for current theories of bilingual language regulation, and situate them in terms of recent proposals relating the coupling of the production and comprehension systems more generally.
Of interest in the current study was how voice inset time (VOT) was influenced by changes in speaking rate across Spanish and English. Three groups of subjects (English monolinguals, Spanish monolinguals and early Spanish-English bilinguals) produced sentences containing voiced and voiceless bilabial stops at different speaking rates. As in previous research, English monolinguals showed rate-dependent effects on their VOT productions: VOT increased as speaking rate decreased. Spanish monolinguals showed a large effect of speaking rate on the duration of prevoicing of the voiced stops. However, they showed only a small effect of rate on the VOT of their voiceless stops, The bilinguals produced VOT values in each language that were nearly identical to their monolingual counterparts. The results from this study indicate that short-lag stops experience minimal variation as a function of speaking rate regardless of the other contrasting phonetic categories within a particular language. In addition, early bilinguals showed evidence of separate representations for voiced and voiceless stops for English and Spanish, Copyright (R) 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel.
The present study examines whether, and to what degree, regressive voicing assimilation of Spanish /s/ (as in rasgo /rasgo/ [ˈraz.ɣ̞ o]) occurs in the speech of advanced second language (L2) learners of Spanish. Acoustic analyses of L2 productions of /s/ in the voicing context (preceding a voiced consonant) and in the non-voicing context (preceding a voiceless consonant) elicited from a contextualized picture-description task revealed a contextual voicing effect in the speech of only a limited number of the advanced L2 speakers. The low occurrence of the assimilation process even amongst the advanced learners may be attributed in part to the variable nature of voicing in the input and to the complexity of the process (i.e. subject to different stylistic, linguistic, and social factors). The study also provides a phonetic description of the variants of L2 Spanish /s/ and finds that when voicing does occur, it is phonetically similar to native Spanish voicing in terms of the phonetic contexts in which voicing occurs, patterns of durational differences of /s/ according to voicing, and the variable nature of its occurrence.
This paper explores issues relating to signaling word boundaries from the perspective of Aylett's Smooth Signal Redundancy proposal (Aylett, Stochastic suprasegmentals: Relationships between redundancy, prosodic structure and care of articulation in spontaneous speech, University of Edinburgh, 2000, Aylett and Turk, Language and Speech 47: 31–56, 2004) that language has evolved to spread redundancy, i.e. recognition likelihood, evenly throughout utterances. In Aylett's proposal, information that enables listeners to identify sequences of elements in an utterance (signal redundancy) comes from two sources: a) language redundancy, recognition likelihood based on lexical, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and other factors, and b) acoustic redundancy, recognition likelihood based on acoustic salience. Smooth signal redundancy is achieved by a complementary relationship between language redundancy and acoustic redundancy that is implemented via prosodic structure.
While Aylett and Turk (Language and Speech 47: 31–56, 2004) present the case for prosodic prominence as a lever for modulating the acoustic salience of syllables, the current paper proposes that prosodic constituency also fulfils this function for words. The current paper proposes that the signal redundancy, or recognition likelihood, of words can be manipulated by signaling their boundaries, and that the occurrence and strength of these boundary markers correlates inversely with language redundancy. Prosodic constituency implements the complementary relationship between language redundancy and word boundary salience.
Smooth Signal Redundancy provides an integrated explanation for a set of properties relating to prosodic constituent structure.
Purpose
The present study investigates the suprasegmental reflexes of code-switching, considering both language context (i.e., language mode) and language dominance.
Design
To this end, an experimental oral production paradigm was administered to 14 Spanish-English bilinguals, comparing code-switched to non-switched productions and varying both context (monolingual or bilingual) and response language (dominant or non-dominant).
Data and Analysis
Productions were analyzed for two suprasegmental features: pitch height and stressed vowel duration.
Conclusions
Results indicate a significant effect of code-switching on suprasegmental production, with code-switched tokens produced with overall greater pitch movement and duration relative to non-switched tokens. These effects, however, were modulated by both language context and language dominance.
Originality
Given the relation of prosody to cognitive factors, this novel approach to the suprasegmental features of code-switching, specifically considering language dominance and context, provides a unique opportunity to further the understanding of the underlying language switching process.
Significance
These findings are addressed within a theoretical framework of predictability and hyper-articulation, and it is suggested that the suprasegmental realizations of code-switched tokens correspond to a degree of contextually driven predictability.
Cross‐language studies have shown that Voice Onset Time (VOT) is a sufficient cue to separate initial stop consonants into phonemic categories. The present study used VOT as a linguistic cue in examining the perception and production of stop consonants in three groups of subjects: unilingual Canadian French, unilingual Canadian English, and bilingual French‐English speakers. Perception was studied by having subjects label synthetically produced stop‐vowel syllables while production was assessed through spectrographic measurements of VOT in word‐initial stops. Six stop consonants, common to both languages, were used for these tasks. On the perception task, the two groups of unilingual subjects showed different perceptual crossovers with those of the bilinguals occupying an intermediate position. The production data indicate that VOT measures can separate voicing contrasts for speakers of Canadian English, but not for speakers of Canadian French. The data also show that language switching in bilinguals is well controlled for production but poorly controlled for perception at the phonological level.
This study investigates the role that native language transfer and task formality play in the second language acquisition of the Spanish voiced stop phonemes /b d g/ and their spirantized variants, [¢ ¤],f in order to identify specific problems that beset learners. The results of a data-based experiment involving two groups of native English speakers studying Spanish reveal that native language transfer plays a prominent role in hampering the acquisition of the voiced spirants [¢ ¤ f]. Students largely fail to spirantize the voiced stops in L2 speech and incorrectly transfer the phonemic status of English /¤/ to Spanish, leading to a slower rate of acquisition of this phone. The presence of orthographic v also interferes with the acquisition of Spanish [b] and [¢] and leads to a decrease in accurate pronunciation during formal reading tasks.
This study investigates the phonetic production of Spanish-English insertional code-switches, constituents of an embedded language inserted within a discourse of a matrix language. While previous research on the phonetics of code-switching has focused exclusively on the segmental properties, the current study provides a detailed examination of the suprasegmental features of code-switched tokens, including pitch height and duration. Code-switched productions are compared with non-code-switched tokens, and results indicate that insertional code-switched tokens are produced with a degree of hyper-articulation, evidenced by an increase in pitch height and duration. The results are discussed within Hyper- and Hypo-articulation Theory, drawing on the notion of a decreased local probability incurred by insertional code-switches.
This study investigates the production and perception of a Catalan-specific vowel contrast by a group of highly proficient, early-onset Catalan–Spanish bilinguals. Spanish has a mid-back vowel (/o/), while Catalan has two (/o/, /ɔ//ɔ/). Most importantly, the study manipulates the amount of activation of the Spanish lexicon in two experimental sessions to examine the transient aspects of cross-linguistic phonetic interference. In the first (unilingual) session speakers produce words in one of their languages only, Catalan. In the second (bilingual) session bilinguals produce words in both of their languages, in random order. The acoustic analysis consists of comparing the height of Catalan [o] and [ɔɔ] in the two sessions, as well as verifying whether bilinguals possess separate categories for these two vowels in the first place. The results show that the presence (vs. absence) of Spanish words in the task affects the realization of the two Catalan mid-back vowels by bilinguals. In particular, the two Catalan vowels become slightly more similar to Spanish [o] when they are pronounced alongside this vowel.
The present study investigates voice onset times (VOTs) to determine if cognates enhance the cross-language phonetic influences in the speech production of a range of Spanish–English bilinguals: Spanish heritage speakers, English heritage speakers, advanced L2 Spanish learners, and advanced L2 English learners. To answer this question, lexical items with considerable phonological, semantic, and orthographic overlap (cognates) and lexical items with no phonological overlap with their English translation equivalents (non-cognates) were examined. The results indicate that there is a significant effect of cognate status in the Spanish production of VOT by Spanish–English bilinguals. These bilinguals produced /t/ with longer VOT values (more English-like) in the Spanish production of cognates compared to non-cognate words. It is proposed that the exemplar model of lexical representation (Bybee, 2001; Pierrehumbert, 2001) can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections by which cognates facilitate phonetic interference in the bilingual mental lexicon.
The present study examines the effect of language switching on phonetic production, contributing to an understanding of the underlying interaction between a bilingual's two phonetic systems. While phonetic interaction has been studied in non-switched and code-switched paradigms, effects of connected speech (e.g. speech planning, pragmatics, etc.) may obscure underlying phonetic interaction. To investigate the impact of language switching, a cued picture-naming task was employed, with Spanish–English bilinguals of differing dominance profiles naming pictures in English and Spanish. Stimuli were produced both as switched and non-switched tokens. Addressing the impact of context, stimuli were presented in three contexts varying in quantity of language. Results indicate an asymmetrical effect of language switching on voice onset time. Specifically, both Spanish-dominant and English-dominant bilinguals demonstrated unidirectional transfer, with the dominant language significantly impacted by language switching. Drawing parallels with findings of asymmetrical temporal costs found at the lexical level, and resulting theoretical models, implications are discussed with reference to possible inhibitory mechanisms at play in bilingual phonetic selection and switching.
In this study, we test the hypothesis that code-switching leads to phonological convergence by examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) realization in the spontaneous code-switched speech of New Mexican Spanish-English bilinguals. We find that average VOT duration values in New Mexican Spanish fall within the range typical of non-contact varieties of the language, while New Mexican English displays VOT values in the low range of typical non-contact English. When we examine the VOT values of Spanish- and English-language words at varying degrees of proximity to code-switch points, we find a similar asymmetry. In Spanish, no effect of recent code-switching is evident. In English, conversely, close proximity to code-switch points results in a significant reduction in VOT values, i.e., in the direction of Spanish. We argue that while the data studied here do not directly demonstrate a causal connection between code-switching and long-term phonological convergence, they would not be inconsistent with such a view. We discuss a number of possible causes for the observed asymmetry between Spanish and English.
The present study examines the production outcomes of late second language (L2) learners in order to determine if the mechanisms that allow the creation of phonetic categories remains available during the lifespan, as the Speech Language Model (SLM) claims. In addition, the study focuses on the type of interaction that exists between the first language (L1) and L2 phonological subsystems. Given the participants’ proficiency level, L1 influence on the L2 is expected, while a bidirectional L1–L2 interaction is unlikely. The main tool used to examine language interaction and category development is VOT (voice onset time) production in monolingual and code-switched (CS) sentences. Participants, then, serve as their own control against which production in CS sentences is compared. The results confirm the availability of L2 phonetic category formation for late L2 learners, while different patterns of L1–L2 uni- and bidirectional interaction indicate that different places of articulation may pose various levels of difficulty in terms of ease and pace of acquisition.
When bilinguals speak to one another, they choose a base language to interact in and then, depending on the need, code-switch to the other (guest) language for a word, a phrase, or a sentence During the perception of a code switch, there is a momentary dominance of base-language units at the onset of the switch, but it is unknown whether this base-language effect is also present in production, that is, whether the phonetics of the base language carry over into the guest language In this study, French-English bilinguals retold stories and read sentences monolingually in English and in French and bilingually in French with English code switches Both the stories and the sentences contained critical words that began with unvoiced stop consonants, whose voice onset times (VOT) were measured The results showed that the base language had no impact on the production of code switches The shift from one language to the other was total and immediate This manifestation of cross-linguistic flexibility is accounted for in terms of a bilingual production model
The historical provenance of a minimum cut-off point (of about 0.25 sec) for pauses in temporal analyses of speech production is associated with Goldman-Eisler's usage. Her rationale was the predominance of articulatory pauses at lengths shorter than 0.25 sec. Both phonotactic facts and empirical analysis of several corpora of readings disconfirm this predominance with respect to pauses 0.13-0.25 sec in length. The vast majority of these pauses are found to be psychological; they are determined by syntax, punctuation, rhetorical and expressive emphasis, poetic format, and stylistic pecularities.
This article addresses the issue of whether bilingual children begin phonological acquisition with one phonological system or two. Five hypotheses are suggested for the possible structure of the bilingual child's phonological system. Analyses of data from a longitudinal study of a Farsi-English bilingual infant, Arsham, supported the hypothesis that the child had acquired two separate phonologies with mutual influence; that is, he made occasional use of phonological features of Farsi in English words and vice-versa. It is suggested that this was due to the pattern of exposure to the two languages, and that other children may show a different pattern, depending on their exposure to the two languages and the role of language dominance.
This study examines correlations in accuracy of the production of one set of segments with accuracy in segments that share a featural contrast in Korean EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Results indicate that accuracy rates for segment sets that share gestures in production tend to correlate, while segments that contrast in the same feature, but require the acquisition of different gestures do not correlate. Data here are from two tasks, a reading task and a mimicry task. Correlation results are similar across the two tasks, though a larger range of inter-subject differences in overall accuracy is evident in the mimicry task. Comparison of correlation patterns with previously published correlation patterns in perceptual identification indicates that patterns differ for perception and production, indicating that the structure of the skill sets, and hence, the acquisitional units for production and perception are different.
This paper examines the productivity of voicing and devoicing rules in Dutch–English interlanguage. In Dutch, but not in English, coda obstruents can be subject to final devoicing and various voice assimilation processes, depending on the context. The analysis of a corpus of casual Dutch and English conversational speech of native Dutch speakers revealed that there are significant differences in the extent to which (de)voicing processes which were produced with a very high frequency in the native language (L1) are transferred into the second language (L2). These differences are explained in light of universal principles of markedness. The degree of transfer of intra-word processes is compared to that of cross-word assimilation processes. Zsiga [Zsiga, E.C., 2003. Articulatory timing in a second language, Studies in Second Language Acquisition 25, 399–432] predicts that no language learner should show a preference for transfer of cross-word timing patterns over intra-word patterns. It is argued that this hypothesis is not confirmed when learners have received explicit instruction on the absence of intra-word processes in the L2.
This study examined the French syllables /tu/ (‘‘tous’’) and /ty/ (‘‘tu’’) produced in three speaking tasks by native speakers of American English and French talkers living in the U. S. In a paired‐comparison task listeners correctly identified more of the vowels produced by French than American talkers, and more vowels produced by experienced than inexperienced American speakers of French. An acoustic analysis revealed that the American talkers produced /u/ with significantly higher F2 values than the French talkers, but produced /y/ with F2 values equal to those of the French talkers. A labeling task revealed that the /y/ vowels produced by the experienced and inexperienced Americans were identified equally well, but that the experienced Americans produced a more identifiable /u/ than the inexperienced Americans. It is hypothesized that English speakers learn French /y/ rapidly because this vowel is not—like French /u/—judged to be equivalent to a vowel of English. The French and American talkers produced /t/ with equal VOT values of about 55 ms, which is intermediate to values commonly observed for monolingual speakers of French and English. It is hypothesized that the bilingual talkers judged the /t/ of French and English to be equivalent, which affected their perceptual target for French /t/ and ultimately their production of this stop.