Phonetic adaptation in non-native speech: Insights from a distributional analysis of long-lag voice onset time.

Abstract

Speakers encountering long-lag voice onset time (VOT) for the first time in their L2 produce VOTs between their L1 and L2 values. Native-like long-lag productions are conditioned by speaker competency factors such as age of acquisition and experience, showing significant production differences between late bilinguals, early bilinguals, and native L2 speakers. Thus far, analyses have focused on average VOTs across speaker groups. This project investigates the full distributional properties of VOT in bilinguals (e.g., variation and skewness) in addition to averages, providing a more informative picture of bilingual acquisition. VOT production data were collected from French-English bilinguals (age of English onset 0–15 years) and submitted to a distribution-based analysis. Results show that while speaker groups differ predictably in mean VOT, the analysis discovers subgroups based on common production behaviors, eliminating the gross categorizations of early and late bilinguals and moving toward gradual, predictable shapes of VOT that are correlated with English schooling, time in an English-speaking country, and age of acquisition. Ultimately, these results may fill in some missing blanks between perception and production, suggesting, for example, that differences in perceived accent and comprehensibility diverge due to degree of overlap with native L2 VOTs.