Interlingual Interactions Elicit Performance Mismatches Not “Compromise” Categories in Early Bilinguals: Evidence from Meta-Analysis and Coronal Stops

Joseph V Casillas

doi:10.3390/languages6010009

Abstract

Previous studies attest that some early bilinguals produce the sounds of their languages in a manner that is characterized as “compromise” with regard to monolingual speakers. The present study uses meta-analytic techniques and coronal stop data from early bilinguals in order to assess this claim. The goal was to evaluate the cumulative evidence for “compromise” voice-onset time (VOT) in the speech of early bilinguals by providing a comprehensive assessment of the literature and presenting an acoustic analysis of coronal stops from early Spanish–English bilinguals. The studies were coded for linguistic and methodological features, as well as effect sizes, and then analyzed using a cross-classified Bayesian meta-analysis. The pooled effect for “compromise” VOT was negligible (β = −0.13). The acoustic analysis of the coronal stop data showed that the early Spanish–English bilinguals often produced Spanish and English targets with mismatched features from their other language. These performance mismatches presumably occurred as a result of interlingual interactions elicited by the experimental task. Taken together, the results suggest that early bilinguals do not have “compromise” VOT, though their speech involves dynamic phonetic interactions that can surface as performance mismatches during speech production.

Highlights

Though early bilinguals with ample experience in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages are believed to show “monolingual-like” L2 speech production (Rao and Ronquest2015), research on bilingual language modes (Grosjean 2001) has shown that cross-linguistic interactions are strengthened in bilingual contexts (Olson 2013; Simonet 2014) and can lead to production/perception that differs from that of monolinguals
Voice timing in stops can be determined by a number of parameters, the most common of which is voice-onset time (VOT, Lisker and Abramson 1964)
VOT realizations include phonetically voiced stops, in which voicing begins before the release, as well as phonetically voiceless, lag stops, in which voicing begins after the release

Summary

Introduction

Though early bilinguals with ample experience in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages are believed to show “monolingual-like” L2 speech production (Rao and Ronquest2015), research on bilingual language modes (Grosjean 2001) has shown that cross-linguistic interactions are strengthened in bilingual contexts (Olson 2013; Simonet 2014) and can lead to production/perception that differs from that of monolinguals. This finding is often framed in terms of “compromise” or “intermediate” phonetic categories in the bilingual production of stop contrasts, mainly because the acoustic properties of the segments are proposed to lie somewhere between those of the two languages. Category is defined as one that is not target-like with regard to some acoustic property This particular line of research has focused on voice timing. Many languages have two-way or three-way oppositions in which lead VOT, short-lag VOT, and long-lag VOT are mapped to phonologically voiced and voiceless categories. For example, contrasts voiced and voiceless stops with lead VOT and short-lag VOT, respectively. On the other hand, contrasts voiced and voiceless stops with short- and long-lag VOT, respectively

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion