Cross-linguistic pitch differences in bilingual speakers

Abstract

Studies in cross-language pitch differences show that languages can fundamentally differ in average pitch range even when speaker differences are accounted for (e.g., Mennen et al., 2012). Such studies usually compare similar populations of monolingual speakers but not bilingual speakers of the languages in question. Bilingual development research, in turn, does not address average language pitch but rather segmental properties such as vowel formants. The current study fills the gap by examining the fundamental frequency (f0, or pitch) of both languages of English-Korean bilinguals. Twenty Americans of Korean descent (female = 13, average age = 24) recorded natural speech during a bilingual interview. Their speech was digitally recorded and transcribed, and f0 was analyzed using the inverse filter control method (Ueda et al., 2007). Average f0 per word, per language, and per subject was then calculated and compared across individuals and groups. Results showed that Korean has significantly higher f0 than English, regardless of gender or age. The implications for research in acoustics and speech communication include a greater consideration for bilingualism or bilingual modes of speech as a variable, as well as an open line of inquiry into further study of cross-language differences within the bilingual speaker, including as a result of code-switching.