Articulatory phonetics of coronal stops in monolingual and simultaneous bilingual speakers of Canadian French and English

Abstract

Previous studies of bilingual speech production have relied on individuals whose age of acquisition of their second language varies. In the proposed research, we take advantage of the unique multilingual environment of Montreal and examine speech production in individuals who have acquired two languages from birth and compare the results to monolingual speakers. Electromagnetic recordings of single-word productions were carried out on three groups of female Canadian speakers (French monolingual, English monolingual, French-English simultaneous bilingual). Spectral moment and formant transition analyses of coronal burst segments showed cross-linguistic differences across vowel contexts. Tongue place of articulation and shape likewise indicated cross-linguistic differences in static articulatory positions. Kinematic analyses further identified language-specific movement patterns that helped clarify certain results from the acoustic analyses, namely that spatiotemporal characteristics of coronal articulation help enhance vocalic dimensions important to the respective language. Similar patterns were observed among the bilingual subjects, with the notable exception that acoustic and kinematic spaces narrowed considerably, resulting in reduced overlap between languages. It appears that simultaneous bilingual speakers not only follow language-appropriate articulatory and acoustic patterns, but further minimize areas of cross-linguistic convergence otherwise found among monolingual speakers.