Same vowels, distinct sounds

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Many early Spanish-English bilingual speakers in the USA learn Spanish as their first language at home and English in school. This paper seeks to elucidate whether these speakers develop a separate phonological system for English and, if so, the role of primary and secondary cues in the development of the second language (L2) system. Design/methodology/approach: The phonetic realization of the voiceless stops /p/, /t/, /k/ is analyzed among three groups: early Spanish-English bilinguals; L1 English speakers who are late learners of Spanish; and L1 Spanish speakers who are late learners of English. The participants ( N = 15) engaged in a reading task and a conversation task in each language during a single recording session. Data and analysis: 1578 tokens of /p/, /t/, /k/ were extracted and analyzed using acoustic software. Voice onset time in milliseconds and center of gravity in Hertz were analyzed, and monofactorial and multifactorial analyses were performed to determine the role of linguistic background. Findings/conclusions: Evidence is found of two phonological systems among early bilingual speakers, with varying degrees of assimilation to the phonological systems of the native speakers of each language. Originality: We argue that early bilinguals construct their L2 system of /p/, /t/, /k/ in English based on the primary cue of voice onset time rather than the secondary cue of center of gravity, as they are accustomed to noticing differences in voice onset time in Spanish and because the center of gravity of /p/, /t/, /k/ in English is more variable than voice onset time, and therefore represents a more variable and less predictable cue for early bilinguals as they construct their L2 system. Significance/implications: This paper contributes to the literature on the construction of phonological systems and to research detailing the speech of early Spanish-English bilinguals.

This paper examines how bilingual and monolingual German speakers’ language use reflects underlying linguistic ideologies. I present a corpus study on bilingual and monolingual German speakers, focusing on phonological, lexical, and discourse pragmatic features. The data suggest that bilingual speakers use more markers of formal language and fewer markers of informal language in formal communicative situations than monolingual speakers. I argue that this is due to monolingual ideologies and standard language ideologies, particularly influencing these formal settings in bilingual speakers. These ideological patterns may lead to linguistic pressure in bilingual speakers to align with the monolingual majority, a phenomenon related to majority language anxiety. Complementing the corpus analysis, semi-structured interviews with bilingual speakers provide personal insights, further illuminating how linguistic ideologies shape their linguistic choices and social experiences.

The present study examines the acoustic vowel space of Greek and Turkish vowels produced by bilingual speakers. The results are presented for both languages’ vowels production by bilingual speakers, as well as compared with the vowels production by monolingual speakers. It is revealed that the acoustic space of the Greek vowels produced by bilingual speakers is larger than the acoustic space of their Turkish vowels, mainly due to the lower and more front position of the point vowels [a] and [i], respectively. Moreover, the acoustic space of the Greek vowels produced by bilingual speakers is smaller than the one of the Greek vowels produced by monolingual speakers. On the contrary, the acoustic space of the Turkish vowels produced by bilingual speakers is larger than the one of the Turkish vowels produced by monolinguals.

We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.

This study presents pioneering data on how adult early bilinguals (heritage speakers) and late bilingual speakers of Turkish and German process grammatical evidentiality in a visual world setting in comparison to monolingual speakers of Turkish. Turkish marks evidentiality, the linguistic reference to information source, through inflectional affixes signaling either direct (-DI) or indirect (-mIş) evidentiality. We conducted an eye-tracking-during-listening experiment where participants were given access to visual ‘evidence’ supporting the use of either a direct or indirect evidential form. The behavioral results indicate that the monolingual Turkish speakers comprehended direct and indirect evidential scenarios equally well. In contrast, both late and early bilinguals were less accurate and slower to respond to direct than to indirect evidentials. The behavioral results were also reflected in the proportions of looks data. That is, both late and early bilinguals fixated less frequently on the target picture in the direct than in the indirect evidential condition while the monolinguals showed no difference between these conditions. Taken together, our results indicate reduced sensitivity to the semantic and pragmatic function of direct evidential forms in both late and early bilingual speakers, suggesting a simplification of the Turkish evidentiality system in Turkish heritage grammars. We discuss our findings with regard to theories of incomplete acquisition and first language attrition.

Speech and singing both make use of the same vocal apparatus, but studies analyzing the formant frequencies of spoken and sung vowels produced by the same subject generally show a difference in vowel quality as a result of articulatory modifications. Though such modifications may be codified and systematized in traditional musical styles, which place special emphasis on pedagogy, they appear more arbitrary in contemporary genres, which are usually passed down from mentors to students as aural traditions. While multiple studies have been conducted on the effects of singing on vowel space in various languages, this study is the first of its kind to take a look at such effects with reference to Nepalese pop rock. Since this study deals with bilingual speakers, the spoken vowels here have been compared with their sung counterparts only after establishing some deviations from those produced by monolingual speakers as referenced in previous phonetic studies of the language. This study elucidates the variation in Nepali vowels while speaking versus singing and attempts to derive an orderly, albeit preliminary, pattern of articulatory modifications that must have led to such variations. 

This study asks whether early bilingual speakers who have already developed a language control mechanism to handle two languages control a dominant and a late acquired language in the same way as late bilingual speakers. We therefore, compared event-related potentials in a language switching task in two groups of participants switching between a dominant (L1) and a weak late acquired language (L3). Early bilingual late learners of an L3 showed a different ERP pattern (larger N2 mean amplitude) as late bilingual late learners of an L3. Even though the relative strength of languages was similar in both groups (a dominant and a weak late acquired language), they controlled their language output in a different manner. Moreover, the N2 was similar in two groups of early bilinguals tested in languages of different strength. We conclude that early bilingual learners of an L3 do not control languages in the same way as late bilingual L3 learners –who have not achieved native-like proficiency in their L2– do. This difference might explain some of the advantages early bilinguals have when learning new languages.

Purpose Language history is an important factor in masked speech recognition. Listeners who acquire the target language later in life perform more poorly than native speakers. However, there are inconsistencies in the literature regarding performance of bilingual speakers who begin learning the target language early in life. The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate speech-in-noise and speech-in-speech recognition for highly proficient early bilingual listeners compared to monolingual and late bilingual listeners. Method Three groups of young adults participated: native monolingual English speakers, bilingual Mandarin-English speakers who learned English from birth (early bilinguals), and native Mandarin speakers who learned English later in life (late bilinguals). All participants had normal hearing and were full-time college students. Recognition was assessed for English sentences in speech-shaped noise and two-talker English speech. Participants provided linguistic and demographic information, and late bilinguals completed the Versant test of spoken English abilities. Results All listeners performed better in speech-shaped noise than two-talker speech. Performance was similar for monolingual and early bilinguals. Late bilinguals performed more poorly overall. There was evidence for a stronger association between masked speech recognition and English dominance for late bilinguals compared to early bilinguals. Conclusion These results support the conclusion that bilingualism itself does not necessarily result in a disadvantage when recognizing masked speech in noise and speech in speech. For populations similar to those studied here (highly proficient early bilinguals), it would be appropriate to evaluate masked speech recognition using the same simple stimuli and normative data used for monolingual speakers of English.

This study investigates semantics-morphosyntax and pragmatics-morphosyntax interfaces in separate experiments, yet examining the same structure, namely the optional verb number marking in Turkish. We tested a group of bilingual heritage speakers of Turkish, whose dominant language is German. Optional use of the overt verb number marking in Turkish interacts with semantic and pragmatic properties of the plural subject of the sentence. The interaction of optional verb number marking with these properties is tested separately in two different experiments, using the Magnitude Estimation technique. The results showed that the bilingual speakers treat both interface types differently from the monolingual speakers. More precisely, the bilingual speakers make finer distinctions regarding the semantic and pragmatic notions that were put into test. This sensitivity results in a semantically and pragmatically constrained pattern, which is in line with both language-specific descriptions and cross-linguistic tendencies. This outcome is taken to suggest that the nonconvergence in the bilingual data stems from a high sensitivity to the semantic and pragmatic properties that constrain the use of the morphosyntactic structure under investigation. The research results are further evaluated from a processing based linguistic framework, namely Modular Online Growth and Use of Language (MOGUL).

Objective:Code-switching is when bilingual individuals alternate between two languages in the same conversation. Some studies find that code-switching frequency is associated with executive functioning, while others do not. Individual attitudes towards bilingual language use and code-switching may explain the inconsistency in the literature. For instance, greater positive attitudes towards code-switching may be associated with more likelihood to engage in that practice and thus strengthen the cognitive benefit in executive function. Additionally, code-switching between English and Spanish has been stigmatized in the U.S., therefore it is unclear what sociocultural factors may predict positive attitudes. In this study, we assessed Latinx bilinguals’ attitudes on code-switching and investigated their relationship with code-switching frequency, sociodemographic and linguistic factors, and executive functioning.Participants and Methods:Participants were 525 community-dwelling English-Spanish bilingual Latinx adults from the Offspring study (Mage= 55.38 (10.42); Meducation= 12.62 (3.34); 71% women; 41% tested in English, 75% immigrant). A language history questionnaire assessed for bilingualism and code-switching frequency. Participants completed 7 questions on code-switching attitudes on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree (e.g., “switching between languages in a conversation is an important part of my identity”), that were summed for a total score with higher scores indicating more positive attitudes. Executive functioning was assessed with the NIH Toolbox Cognition battery, verbal fluencies, and the digit span test. Sociodemographic and linguistic factors included age, sex, education, immigrant status, parental years of education, English and Spanish proficiency (average score on self-reported ratings on speaking, reading, writing, and understanding), and testing language. General linear models evaluated the association of code-switching attitudes on executive function, after adjusting for relevant covariates.Results:Positive code-switching attitudes were correlated with greater code-switching, r(499)=.33, p<.001. Younger age r(499)=-.11, being born in the US t(493)=-2.05, greater English proficiency r(497)=.15, and English dominance t(499)=2.22, were associated with more positive code-switching attitudes (all p’s <.05). Sex, education, parental years of education, and Spanish proficiency were not associated with code-switching attitudes. Overall models of attitudes with executive function indicated that positive code-switching attitudes were associated with worse visual working memory (b = -0.08, t(169) = -2.75, 95% CI [0.14, -0.02]) after adjusting for age, sex, education, immigration status, parental years of education and testing language. Code-switching attitudes were not significantly associated with other executive function measures.Conclusions:Among a community-based sample of bilingual middle-aged Latinx adults, positive attitudes towards code-switching were associated with greater likelihood of code-switching in conversations, higher English proficiency, being US born, younger age, and English language dominance but negatively associated with visual working memory. These findings indicate that code-switching attitudes are influenced by sociodemographic and linguistic factors. Additionally, the negative association between code-switching attitudes and visual working memory provides support for previous studies showing code-switching as a disadvantage to cognition. Results of this study suggest that detailed characterization of sociocultural factors and aspects of bilingualism can provide further clarity in determining if there is a potential bilingual cognitive advantage. Future research should examine the relationship of code-switching with other aspects of bilingualism (e.g., age of acquisition).

The importance of vowel formant frequencies and proximity in vowel space to the perception of foreign accent

It is shown that within-speaker variations in vocal effort and phonation affect fundamental frequency (F0) and the formant frequencies of vowels in the sense of a linear compression/expansion of the spectral separations between them, given an adequate scaling of pitch. Between-speaker variations in size correspond to a translation of the spectral peaks shaped by F0 and the formants if pitch is scaled tonotopically (in Bark). On the basis of these observations, invariant cues to vowel quality are suggested. It is further shown that vowels produced by adult women tend to be phonetically more explicit and, hence, more peripheral in 'vowel space' than those of men and children. It is also shown that the formant frequencies of vowels subjected to paralinguistic variation are related by power functions of frequency.

The paper focuses on addressing the bilingual phenomenon among bilingual speakers that learn or even speak the language at the same time L1 and L2. The phenomenon of bilingualism emerges as a result of the languages in contact. Within this phenomenon, we will consider the use of Albanian language and the local speech of the citizens of Rahovec, Rahovecjançe. Quantitative study, in this paper consists of sociolinguistic measurement, in individual interviews recorded with voice recorder in “smart phone”. The graphical presentation we claim to bring concrete results about the degree of bilingualism in the different social strata, as a result of this and also toward s the emergence of the concrete situation of the use of language codes in each language domain. Social stratification shows the current state of the use of both language codes. The bilingual phenomenon with the local speech is considered to be disappearing, and the level of bilingual speakers should be declining.

The present study describes the results of two experiments that analyze the effects of language dominance on Catalan/Spanish bilingual speech production. We examined the acoustics of the Catalan [a]~[ə] alternation (a phonological process induced by lexical stress) and of the Catalan mid vowel contrasts /e/-/ɛ/ and /o/-/ɔ/ (two phonemic contrasts) in the speech of Catalan- vs. Spanish-dominant early Catalan/Spanish bilinguals from Majorca (Spain). The results indicate that, contrary to the analysis of the Catalan mid vowels, stressed and unstressed Spanish and Catalan /a/ yielded no significant difference as a function of language dominance. These findings suggest that unstressed vowel reduction, a phonological process, may be relatively easier to acquire than phonemic contrasts with a low functional load (/e/-/ɛ/, /o/-/ɔ/), perhaps because its predictability and high frequency may attract attention and/or relieve cognitive resources, which could be conducive to phonological learning. These findings demonstrate that language dominance effects in the production of phonemic contrasts, widely researched in the literature on early bilingualism, do not guarantee the same effects on the implementation of phonological processes.

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to examine the extent to which bilingual speakers maintain language-specific phonological contrasts for homorganic stops when a cue is shared across both languages. To this end, voice onset time (VOT) was investigated in three groups of participants: early bilinguals speakers of Canadian French and Canadian English (n = 8), monolingual speakers of Canadian English (n = 8), and monolingual speakers of Canadian French (n = 7). Three questions were targeted: What are the general patterns of VOT production in bilingual and monolinguals? Do bilingual speakers produce different mean VOT than monolinguals? Do bilingual speakers produce different variability in VOT than monolinguals? Acoustic measurements of VOT were made from monosyllabic English and French words with word-initial bilabial or coronal stop consonants. The results indicate that the early bilingual speakers maintain monolingual-like phonemic contrasts, but that they exhibit more variation within categories than monolingual speakers.