Acoustic measurement of word-initial stop consonants in English-French interlingual homophones

Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine word-initial stop consonants of Canadian English (CE) and Canadian French (CF) interlingual homophones in order to describe how they differ in their acoustic properties. Interlingual homophones (IH) are words across languages that are phonemically identical but phonetically and semantically different, for example, English two /tu/ and French tout <all> /tu/. Even though they are deemed phonemically identical, at the acoustical level they may be quite different. In the current study, Canadian bilingual English and French speakers were asked to produce interlingual homophones embedded in carrier phrases and in isolation. Voice onset time, relative burst intensity, and burst spectral properties of the IH words were measured and compared within and across languages. The acoustic measurements obtained will be used (1) to make predictions about which acoustic features may provide cues to language identity, and (2) to create stop tokens for a Goodness Rating study. Results from this study will provide insight on the acoustic-phonetic representation of stop consonants in Canadian bilingual English and French speakers.