Intonational convergence in language contact: Utterance-final F0 contours in Catalan–Spanish early bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigates utterance-final pitch accents in declaratives in two contact languages (Catalan and Spanish) as produced by two groups of Catalan–Spanish bilinguals (Catalan-dominant and Spanish-dominant). It contributes to a growing body of research showing that bilinguals transfer the intonational patterns of their native language to their non-native language, and it provides a sociolinguistic profile of an intonational variable in a language contact situation. We also examine the interaction of native and non-native patterns within the performance of the bilinguals. Evidence is presented for the existence of a process of phonetic category assimilation of non-native pitch contrasts to native pitch contours, as well as for phonetic new-category formation in second language learning.