Inter-language interference in VOT production by L2-dominant bilinguals: Asymmetries in phonetic code-switching

Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Variation in Bilingual Speech: Cantonese /n/ > [l] Merger in Early Cantonese-English Bilinguals

/n/ is merging with /l/ in Cantonese, as well as in several other Chinese languages. The Cantonese merger appears categorical, with /n/ becoming /l/ syllable-initially. This project aims to describe /n/ and /l/ in Cantonese and English speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals to better understand the status of the merger in Cantonese and its potential for cross-linguistic mutual influence. We examine early bilinguals' (n = 34) speech using the Speech in Cantonese and English (SpiCE) corpus, focusing on pre-vocalic /n/ and /l/ onsets in both languages. Items were auditorily coded for their perceived category identity, and two acoustic measures anticipated to have the potential to differentiate /n/ and /l/ within and across languages were applied. In English, bilinguals maintained a clear contrast between /n/ and /l/ in the auditory coding and in acoustic measurements. In Cantonese, however, there were higher rates of [l] for /n/ items, in line with the merger, and [n] for /l/ items, indicating hypercorrection of the pattern. Across languages, bilinguals produced language-specific /l/s, but there were no acoustic differences between Cantonese and English /n/. The participation of Cantonese /n/ in a sound change does not appear to compromise English /n/s' patterning, suggesting that Cantonese and English /n/ are maintained as distinct categories in the minds of early bilinguals.

Language Contact Within the Speaker: Phonetic Variation and Crosslinguistic Influence

A recent model of sound change posits that the direction of change is determined, at least in part, by the distribution of variation within speech communities. We explore this model in the context of bilingual speech, asking whether the less variable language constrains phonetic variation in the more variable language, using a corpus of spontaneous speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals. As predicted, given the phonetic distributions of stop obstruents in Cantonese compared with English, intervocalic English /b d g/ were produced with less voicing for Cantonese-English bilinguals and word-final English /t k/ were more likely to be unreleased compared with spontaneous speech from two monolingual English control corpora. Whereas voicing initial obstruents can be gradient in Cantonese, the release of final obstruents is prohibited. Neither Cantonese-English bilingual initial voicing nor word-final stop release patterns were significantly impacted by language mode. These results provide evidence that the phonetic variation in crosslinguistically linked categories in bilingual speech is shaped by the distribution of phonetic variation within each language, thus suggesting a mechanistic account for why some segments are more susceptible to cross-language influence than others.

Language transfer in L2 academic writings: a dependency grammar approach

Dependency distance (DD) is an important factor in language processing and can affect the ease with which a sentence is understood. Previous studies have investigated the role of DD in L2 writing, but little is known about how the native language influences DD in L2 academic writing. This study is probably the first one that investigates, though a large dataset of over 400 million words, whether the native language of L2 writers influences the DD in their academic writings. Using a dataset of over 2.2 million abstracts of articles downloaded from Scopus in the fields of Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences, the study analyzes the DD patterns, parsed by the latest version of the syntactic parser Stanford Corenlp 4.5.5, in the academic writing of L2 learners from different language backgrounds. It is found that native languages influence the DD of English L2 academic writings. When the mean dependency distance (MDD) of native languages is much longer than that of native English, the MDD of their English L2 academic writings will be much longer than that of English native academic writings. The findings of this study will deepen our insights into the influence of native language transfer on L2 academic writing, potentially shaping pedagogical strategies in L2 academic writing education.

Faces, English words and Chinese characters: a study of dual-task interference in mono-and bilingual speakers

The many-to-many hypothesis suggests that face and visual-word processing tasks share neural resources in the brain, even though they show opposing hemispheric asymmetries in neuroimaging and neuropsychologic studies. Recently it has been suggested that both stimulus and task effects need to be incorporated into the hypothesis. A recent study found dual-task interference between face and text functions that lateralized to the same hemisphere, but not when they lateralized to different hemispheres. However, it is not clear whether a lack of interference between word and face recognition would occur for other languages, particularly those with a morpho-syllabic script, like Chinese, for which there is some evidence of greater right hemispheric involvement. Here, we used the same technique to probe for dual-task interference between English text, Chinese characters and face recognition. We tested 20 subjects monolingual for English and 20 subjects bilingual for Chinese and English. We replicated the prior result for English text and showed similar results for Chinese text with no evidence of interference with faces. We also did not find interference between Chinese and English text. The results support a view in which reading English words, reading Chinese characters and face identification have minimal sharing of neural resources.

Exploring language dominance through code-switching: intervocalic voiced stop lenition in Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals

The present study examines the relationship between the two grammars of bilingual speakers, the linguistic ecologies in which the L1 and L2 become active, and how these topics can be explored in a bilingual community undergoing L1 attrition. Our experiment focused on the production of intervocalic phonemic voiced stops for L1-Afrikaans/L2-Spanish bilinguals in Patagonia, Argentina. While these phonemes undergo systematic intervocalic lenition in Spanish (e.g., /b d ɡ/ > [β ð ɣ]), they do not in Afrikaans (e.g., /b d/ > [b d]). The bilingual participants in our study produced target Afrikaans and Spanish words in unilingual and code-switched speaking contexts. The results show that: (i) the participants produce separate phonetic categories in Spanish and Afrikaans; (ii) code-switching affects the production of the target sounds asymmetrically, such that L1 Afrikaans influences the production of L2 Spanish sounds but not vice versa; and (iii) this L1-to-L2 influence remains robust despite the instability of the L1 itself. Altogether, our findings speak to the persistence of a bilingual's L1 phonological grammar despite cross-generational L1 attrition.

The acoustic realization of language-specific phonological categories despite dynamic cross-linguistic influence in bilingual and trilingual speech

The present study examines the acoustic realization of the English, Japanese, and Spanish /k/ in the productions of two groups of English-Japanese bilinguals [first language (L1) English-second language (L2) Japanese and L1 Japanese-L2 English] and one trilingual group [L1 Spanish-L2 English-third language (L3) Japanese]. With the analysis of voice onset time (VOT) as a proxy for the degree of cross-linguistic influence in each language, this experiment compares the production patterns of L2 and L3 learners of Japanese and explores the effects of language mode and cognate status on the speech patterns in each of the languages of these bilingual and trilingual individuals. By manipulating the degree of activation of the target and non-target language(s) with the use of cognates and non-cognates in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual experimental sessions, this study investigates static as well as transient phonetic influence. Even though these bilingual and trilingual speakers produce language-specific VOT patterns for each language, the acoustic analyses also reveal evidence of phonetic convergence as a result of language mode and cognate status. These results show that trilingual speakers are able to maintain language-specific phonological categories in their L1, L2, and L3, overcoming long-term (static) traces of one language influencing the other, despite evidence of short-term (dynamic) cross-linguistic influence.

Using automated acoustic analysis to explore the link between planning and articulation in second language speech production

Speakers learning a second language show systematic differences from native speakers in the retrieval, planning, and articulation of speech. A key challenge in examining the interrelationship between these differences at various stages of production is the need for manual annotation of fine-grained properties of speech. We introduce a new method for automatically analyzing voice onset time (VOT), a key phonetic feature indexing differences in sound systems cross-linguistically. In contrast to previous approaches, our method allows reliable measurement of prevoicing, a dimension of VOT variation used by many languages. Analysis of VOTs, word durations, and reaction times from German-speaking learners of Spanish (Baus et al., 2013) suggest that while there are links between the factors impacting planning and articulation, these two processes also exhibit some degree of independence. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of speech production and future research in bilingual language processing.

Measuring Language Dominance in Early Spanish/English Bilinguals

This paper analyzes the comparability of language dominance assessments with the purpose of determining whether they yield similar results. Language dominance is an important construct in the field of bilingualism as it allows for a more thorough classification of bilinguals and is thought to play a role in both bilingual production and perception. Yet, there is no unified methodology for assessing language dominance. To that end, we ask the following research question: Do different language dominance measures predict the results of one another? Twenty-nine Spanish/English early bilinguals completed four language dominance assessments. Results indicate that three of the four assessments are highly correlated with each other while the fourth, a repetition task, is not significantly correlated with any of the assessments. Further, twenty of the participants were categorized differently across the individual measures; the more “balanced” a bilingual was, the greater likelihood of being categorized differently. These results indicate that certain language dominance assessments are not comparable with one another and suggest that it could be the case they do not even measure the same variable.

Plasticity, Variability and Age in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism

Much of what is known about the outcome of second language acquisition and bilingualism can be summarized in terms of inter-individual variability, plasticity and age. The present review looks at variability and plasticity with respect to their underlying sources, and at age as a modulating factor in variability and plasticity. In this context we consider critical period effects vs. bilingualism effects, early and late bilingualism, nativelike and non-nativelike L2 attainment, cognitive aging, individual differences in learning, and linguistic dominance in bilingualism. Non-uniformity is an inherent characteristic of both early and late bilingualism. This review shows how plasticity and age connect with biological and experiential sources of variability, and underscores the value of research that reveals and explains variability. In these ways the review suggests how plasticity, variability and age conspire to frame fundamental research issues in L2 acquisition and bilingualism, and provides points of reference for discussion of the present Frontiers in Psychology Research Topic.

Phonetic drift in Spanish-English bilinguals: Experiment and a self-organizing model

Studies of speech accommodation provide evidence for change in use of language structures beyond the critical/sensitive period. For example, Sancier and Fowler (1997) found changes in the voice-onset-times (VOTs) of both languages of a Portuguese-English bilingual as a function of her language context. Though accommodation has been studied widely within a monolingual context, it has received less attention in and between the languages of bilinguals. We tested whether these findings of phonetic accommodation, speech accommodation at the phonetic level, would generalize to a sample of Spanish-English bilinguals. We recorded participants reading Spanish and English sentences after 3-4 months in the US and after 2-4 weeks in a Spanish speaking country and measured the VOTs of their voiceless plosives. Our statistical analyses show that participants' English VOTs drifted towards those of the ambient language, but their Spanish VOTs did not. We found considerable variation in the extent of individual participants' drift in English. Further analysis of our results suggested that native-likeness of L2 VOTs and extent of active language use predict the extent of drift. We provide a model based on principles of self-organizing dynamical systems to account for our Spanish-English phonetic drift findings and the Portuguese-English findings.

Cross-Linguistic Influence in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: Evidence of Cognate Effects in the Phonetic Production and Processing of a Vowel Contrast

The present study examines cognate effects in the phonetic production and processing of the Catalan back mid-vowel contrast (/o/-/ɔ/) by 24 early and highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Participants completed a picture-naming task and a forced-choice lexical decision task in which they were presented with either words (e.g., /bɔsk/ "forest") or non-words based on real words, but with the alternate mid-vowel pair in stressed position ((*)/bosk/). The same cognate and non-cognate lexical items were included in the production and lexical decision experiments. The results indicate that even though these early bilinguals maintained the back mid-vowel contrast in their productions, they had great difficulties identifying non-words and real words based on the identity of the Catalan mid-vowel. The analyses revealed language dominance and cognate effects: Spanish-dominants exhibited higher error rates than Catalan-dominants, and production and lexical decision accuracy were also affected by cognate status. The present study contributes to the discussion of the organization of early bilinguals' dominant and non-dominant sound systems, and proposes that exemplar theoretic approaches can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections that account for the interactions between the phonetic and lexical levels of early bilingual individuals.

Phonological Factors Affecting L1 Phonetic Realization of Proficient Polish Users of English

Acoustic phonetic studies examine the L1 of Polish speakers with professional level proficiency in English. The studies include two tasks, a production task carried out entirely in Polish and a phonetic code-switching task in which speakers insert target Polish words or phrases into an English carrier. Additionally, two phonetic parameters are studied: the oft-investigated VOT, as well as glottalization vs. sandhi linking of word-initial vowels. In monolingual Polish mode, L2 interference was observed for the VOT parameter, but not for sandhi linking. It is suggested that this discrepancy may be related to the differing phonological status of the two phonetic parameters. In the code-switching tasks, VOTs were on the whole more English-like than in monolingual mode, but this appeared to be a matter of individual performance. An increase in the rate of sandhi linking in the code-switches, except for the case of one speaker, appeared to be a function of accelerated production of L1 target items.

Production and Perception of the /i/-/I/ Vowel Contrast: The Case of L2-Dominant Early Learners of English

The present study explored the production and perception of the /i/-/I/ vowel contrast in second language (L2)-dominant early learners of American English who no longer fluently speak their first language (L1, Spanish). The production task analyzed the extent to which the early learner group differed from controls (native English speakers and L1-Spanish late-onset learners of English) with regard to duration and spectral centroids. The perception experiment examined how these early learners classified resynthesized stimuli drawn from the /i/-/I/ contrast using distinct acoustic cues - spectral and temporal - in a 2-alternative forced choice identification task. The first experiment revealed that the early learners produced the contrast in a native-like manner in terms of the spectral envelope and duration use. The second experiment found that early learners differed from both control groups in how they categorized the /i/-/I/ continua based on spectrum and duration, and the extent to which they rely on these two cues. The effects of linguistic experience on L2 phonetic behavior are discussed.

The Effects of Language Dominance in the Perception and Production of the Galician Mid Vowel Contrasts

AIMS

This study investigates the perception and production of the Galician mid vowel contrasts by 54 early Spanish-Galician bilinguals in the cities of Vigo and Santiago (Galicia, Spain). Empirical data is provided to examine the role of language dominance in the perception and production of Galician mid vowel contrasts in order to determine whether the Galician vowel system is becoming more Spanish-like as a result of extensive contact with Spanish in urban areas.

METHODS

Perception and production data for each mid vowel contrast were collected in (1) binary forced-choice identification tasks, (2) AX discrimination tasks and (3) a reading-aloud task.

RESULTS

Results from binary forced-choice identification and AX discrimination tasks indicate that Spanish-dominant bilinguals have great difficulty in discriminating between these mid vowels while Galician-dominant subjects display a robust categorical identification of the two mid vowel categories. Acoustic analyses of their productions show that Galician-dominant bilinguals implement a Galician-specific /e/-/x025B;/ contrast but Spanish-dominant ones produce a single, merged Spanish-like front mid vowel. However, both language dominance groups seem to maintain a more robust /o/-/x0254;/ contrast. This asymmetry between front and back mid vowels is found in the productions of both language dominance groups.

CONCLUSION

These results show that language dominance is a strong predictor of the production and perception abilities of Spanish-Galician bilinguals, and that only Galician-dominant subjects in these urban areas possess two independent phonetic categories in the front and back mid vowel space.

The Influence of Word Retrieval and Planning on Phonetic Variation: Implications for Exemplar Models

Over the past several decades, an increasing number of empirical studies have documented the interaction of information across the traditional linguistic modules of phonetics, phonology, and lexicon. For example, the frequency with which a word occurs influences its phonetic properties of its sounds; high frequency words tend to be reduced relative to low frequency words. Lexicalist Exemplar Models have been successful in accounting for this body of results through a single mechanism, exemplars- memory representations that integrate lexical, phonological, and phonetic information into a single structure. We review recent studies that suggest there are critical limitations to assuming that phonetic variation solely reflects the storage of word labels and sound structure in exemplars. Specifically, these studies show that factors related to the on-line retrieval and planning of lexical items also influence phonetic variation. The implications of these findings for exemplar models are discussed; the relationship of exemplar storage to the broader cognitive system is examined, as well as alternative theoretical frameworks incorporating gradience at all levels of linguistic representation.

You sound like Mommy

Previous research indicates that monolingual infants have difficulty learning minimal pairs (i.e., words differing by one phoneme) produced by a speaker uncharacteristic of their language environment and that bilinguals might share this difficulty. To clearly reveal infants’ underlying phonological representations, we minimized task demands by embedding target words in naming phrases, using a fully crossed, between-subjects experimental design. We tested 17-month-old French-English bilinguals’ ( N = 30) and English monolinguals’ ( N = 31) learning of a minimal pair (/k∊m/ – /g∊m/) produced by an adult bilingual or monolingual. Infants learned the minimal pair only when the speaker matched their language environment. This vulnerability to subtle changes in word pronunciation reveals that neither monolingual nor bilingual 17-month-olds possess fully generalizable phonological representations.

Age of acquisition and allophony in Spanish-English bilinguals

This study examines age of acquisition (AoA) in Spanish-English bilinguals' phonetic and phonological knowledge of /l/ in English and Spanish. In English, the lateral approximant /l/ varies in darkness by context [based on the second formant (F2) and the difference between F2 and the first formant (F1)], but the Spanish /l/ does not. Further, English /l/ is overall darker than Spanish /l/. Thirty-eight college-aged adults participated: 11 Early Spanish-English bilinguals who learned English before the age of 5 years, 14 Late Spanish-English bilinguals who learned English after the age of 6 years, and 13 English monolinguals. Participants' /l/ productions were acoustically analyzed by language and context. The results revealed a Spanish-to-English phonetic influence on /l/ productions for both Early and Late bilinguals, as well as an English-to-Spanish phonological influence on the patterning of /l/ for the Late Bilinguals. These findings are discussed in terms of the Speech Learning Model and the effect of AoA on the interaction between a bilingual speaker's two languages.

Language switching makes pronunciation less nativelike

It is well known that multilingual speakers' nonnative productions are accented. Do these deviations from monolingual productions simply reflect the mislearning of nonnative sound categories, or can difficulties in processing speech sounds also contribute to a speaker's accent? Such difficulties are predicted by interactive theories of production, which propose that nontarget representations, partially activated during lexical access, influence phonetic processing. We examined this possibility using language switching, a task that is well known to disrupt multilingual speech production. We found that these disruptions extend to the articulation of individual speech sounds. When native Spanish speakers are required to unexpectedly switch the language of production between Spanish and English, their speech becomes more accented than when they do not switch languages (particularly for cognate targets). These findings suggest that accents reflect not only difficulty in acquiring second-language speech sounds but also the influence of representations partially activated during on-line speech processing.

Focusing the lens of language experience: perception of Ma'di stops by Greek and English bilinguals and monolinguals

Monolingual listeners are constrained by native language experience when categorizing and discriminating unfamiliar non-native contrasts. Are early bilinguals constrained in the same way by their two languages, or do they possess an advantage? Greek-English bilinguals in either Greek or English language mode were compared to monolinguals on categorization and discrimination of Ma'di stop-voicing distinctions that are non-native to both languages. As predicted, English monolinguals categorized Ma'di prevoiced plosive and implosive stops and the coronal voiceless stop as English voiced stops. The Greek monolinguals categorized the Ma'di short-lag voiceless stops as Greek voiceless stops, and the prevoiced implosive stops and the coronal prevoiced stop as Greek voiced stops. Ma'di prenasalized stops were uncategorized. Greek monolinguals discriminated the non-native voiced-voiceless contrasts very well, whereas the English monolinguals did poorly. Bilinguals were given all oral and written instructions either in English or in Greek (language mode manipulation). Each language mode subgroup categorized Ma'di stop-voicing comparably to the corresponding monolingual group. However, the bilinguals' discrimination was unaffected by language mode: both subgroups performed intermediate to the monolinguals for the prevoiced-voiceless contrast. Thus, bilinguals do not possess an advantage for unfamiliar non-native contrasts, but are nonetheless uniquely configured language users, differing from either monolingual group.

Two ways to listen: Do L2-dominant bilinguals perceive stop voicing according to language mode?

How listeners categorize two phones predicts the success with which they will discriminate the given phonetic distinction. In the case of bilinguals, such perceptual patterns could reveal whether the listener's two phonological systems are integrated or separate. This is of particular interest when a given contrast is realized differently in each language, as is the case with Greek and English stop-voicing distinctions. We had Greek-English early sequential bilinguals and Greek and English monolinguals (baselines) categorize, rate, and discriminate stop-voicing contrasts in each language. All communication with each group of bilinguals occurred solely in one language mode, Greek or English. The monolingual groups showed the expected native-language constraints, each perceiving their native contrast more accurately than the opposing nonnative contrast. Bilinguals' category-goodness ratings for the same physical stimuli differed, consistent with their language mode, yet their discrimination performance was unaffected by language mode and biased toward their dominant language (English). We conclude that bilinguals integrate both languages in a common phonetic space that is swayed by their long-term dominant language environment for discrimination, but that they selectively attend to language-specific phonetic information for phonologically motivated judgments (category-goodness ratings).