Interaction between the native and second language phonetic subsystems

Abstract

The underlying premise of this study was that the two phonetic subsystems of a bilingual interact. The study tested the hypothesis that the vowels a bilingual produces in a second language (L2) may differ from vowels produced by monolingual native speakers of the L2 as the result of either of two mechanisms: phonetic category assimilation or phonetic category dissimilation. Earlier work revealed that native speakers of Italian identify English /e i / tokens as instances of the Italian /e/ category even though English /e i / is produced with more tongue movement than Italian /e/ is. Acoustic analyses in the present study examined /e i /s produced by four groups of Italian–English bilinguals who differed according to their age of arrival in Canada from Italy (early versus late) and frequency of continued Italian use (low-L1-use versus high-L1-use). Early bilinguals who seldom used Italian (Early-low) were found to produce English /e i / with significantly more movement than native English speakers. However, both groups of late bilinguals (Late-low, Late-high) tended to produced /e i / with less movement than NE speakers. The exaggerated movement in /e i /s produced by the Early-low group participants was attributed to the dissimilation of a phonetic category they formed for English /e i / from Italian /e/. The undershoot of movement in /e i /s produced by late bilinguals, on the other hand, was attributed to their failure to establish a new category for English /e i /, which led to the merger of the phonetic properties of English /e i / and Italian /e/.