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This study has three goals. First, it examines phonological attrition of the Arabic geminate (i.e., long sound)-singleton contrast in the speech of native speakers of Arabic who acquired English after puberty. Second, it compares geminate production in late bilinguals to early bilinguals. Third, it investigates whether universal phonetic/acoustic factors have an effect on the degree of attrition across generations. Participants performed a delayed word repetition task, where mean consonant duration was measured and compared across the two bilingual groups and compared with native speakers of Arabic. Results show that a geminate-singleton duration ratio continuum across groups was formed, where monolingual speakers of Arabic had the highest values, followed by late bilinguals, and then early bilinguals. These results are interpreted as evidence that language remains malleable across the lifespan. Moreover, whereas there was no effect of manner of articulation, voiced geminates showed a significantly higher degree of attrition across both bilingual groups. In addition, inherently longer geminates attrited at a significantly higher rate. Implications for models of phonological attrition are discussed.

An encompassing study projected by Rao (2016) identified various factors such as transfer from English, parental input, and pragmatic context as contributing to the source of variation in the production of nuclear (i.e., final) intonation in the Spanish of heritage speakers (HSs) of Mexican Spanish who lived in the United States. The current study expands on Rao (2016) by quantifying the degree of similarity to (a) English and (b) parental intonation patterns in nuclear yes-no question intonation in Porteño (i.e., Buenos Aires, Argentina) Spanish HSs and Caraqueño (i.e., Caracas, Venezuela) Spanish HSs living in Ontario, Canada. Whereas the intonation contour in absolute interrogative questions in Canadian English is primarily ascending (Séguinot, 1976), it is often descending in Porteño (Gabriel et al., 2010) and Caraqueño Spanish (Sosa, 1999). Therefore, these groups of bilinguals lend themselves well to a study examining whether heritage intonational phonology is more influenced by parental input or whether it exhibits drift towards English. We tested eight adult English-dominant HSs – four of Argentinean heritage and four of Venezuelan heritage – and their parents. All participants filled out the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP; Birdsong, Gertken & Amengual, 2012). The participants were also asked to complete a semi-spontaneous task, where they were presented with fictional scenarios (identical in both languages) and asked to respond (e.g., Fictional Scenario: Entrás a un negocio donde nunca estuviste antes y preguntás si tienen mandarinas (You walk into a store that you’ve never been to before and ask if they have any mandarins) Anticipated utterance: ¿Tienen mandarinas? (Do you have any mandarins?)). Pragmatic context was controlled and taken into account with the elicitation of 6 different kinds of yes-no questions: surprise questions, requests, information-seeking questions, confirmation, offers and orders. The tasks were completed by both HSs and their parents; they first completed the task in Spanish, followed by English. English-speaking controls completed the same tasks only in English. This study only focuses on the Spanish stimuli of the HSs and their parents as well as the English of the control group. Results were caluclated using the total percent of frequencies of pitch accents across all participants. To analyze the impact of group on these pitch accents, a 3 x 4 Chi-squared was run across group and pitch accent, reavealing a significant impact of group on the frequency of pitch accent (p < 0.001, φ = 0.39). While L+H* showed a numerical declining trend across the three groups, this effect did not achieve significance (max absolute SR = 1.1). L* showed an increase across groups that achieved marginal significance (max absolute SR = -1.9). L+¡H* showed a significant decrease across the three groups (max absolute SR = -2.5). H+L* showed a significant difference across groups, however, this change was driven by a greater frequency in the monolingual English group (SR = 2.8), with no parametric trend across the three groups. An analysis was then run to analyze the impact of group on these boundary tones within the Argentinean group (p < 0.001, φ = 0.54) and then the Venezuelan group (p < 0.001, φ = 0.65), a 3 x 3 Chi-squared was run across generation and boundary, revealing a significant impact of generation on the frequency of boundary tone. Parental influence on pitch accent, nuclear pitch configuration, and boundary tones was also investigated. The proportion for each response characteristic for each child was paired with their parent’s proportion of responses (e.g. Child 1’s proportion of responses with a L* pitch accent was paired with their parent’s proportion of responses with an L* pitch accent), and bivariate Pearson correlations were performed for each type of characteristic. Parents’ pitch accents were significantly related to their child’s proportions of pitch accents (r(34) = 0.46, p = 0.005, CI = [0.15 0.68]). Neither boundary tone (r(16) = 0.18, p = 0.49, CI = [-0.32 0.59]) nor nuclear pitch configuration (r(16) = 0.21, p = 0.40, CI = [-0.28 0.62]) showed any significant relationship between parent and child. In sum, the results reveal that, while we do note parental influence on pitch accents, we do not observe this effect much on heritage speakers' boundary tones and nuclear pitch configurations, where we ascertain shifts toward English in heritage Spanish question intonation.

Recent work has shown that exposure to orthographic effects can promote first-language (L1) phonological transfer. However, it is relatively unknown whether orthographic effects persist in highly proficient bilinguals. Here, we examined how L1 orthographic depth (regularity in grapheme-phoneme correspondences) modulated Korean-English and Farsi-English bilinguals’ (n = 25 each) production of fricatives in English words (e.g., /ˈmeloʊ/ vs. /ˈmelən/). Native English speakers (n = 25) served as a control group. Because fricatives are produced as geminate sounds in both Korean and Farsi, we expected L1-based transfer. Participants completed four tasks: an eye-movement reading task, word-naming task, cloze test, and language background questionnaire. The stimuli were controlled for word frequency, word length, number of syllables, and stress. We expect language-specific differences, corroborating previous neuro-linguistic evidence that shallow and deep orthographies differentially rely more heavily on phonological and lexical pathways, depending on language-specific demands. To explore this aspect, we employed an acoustic classification method for fricatives extracting cepstral coefficients and using HMMs to divide the sounds in regions based on their internal variance, aimed at determining whether fricatives produced by different groups can be classified correctly. This work has implications for both second-language (L2) speech learning models and classroom instruction.

Sensitive perception to environmental sound is important for an individual's daily life since it helps in responding to the environment quickly and avoiding potential risks. It remains unclear, however, whether and how bilingual experiences with different native language backgrounds influence brain responses reflecting environmental sound perception. The present study compared Chinese-English bilinguals, Spanish-English bilinguals, and English monolinguals on their brain response to environmental sound perception and further examined its processing mechanism. The present study did not find the differences between English monolinguals and two bilingual groups on the environmental sound perception. However, we found that compared with Spanish-English bilinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals showed significantly larger mismatch negativity (MMN), indicating that Chinese-English bilinguals were more sensitive to the environmental sounds than that of Spanish-English bilinguals. Further, compared with Spanish-English bilinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals showed significantly larger theta oscillation. In addition, the theta oscillation is significantly correlated with MMN for Chinese-English bilinguals. The results indicated that the advantage of Chinese-English bilingual experience on environmental sound perception may be due to the enhanced top-down cognitive ability. In summary, these findings suggest that compared with the Spanish-English bilinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals showed an advantage in environmental sound perception via enhanced top-down cognitive modulation.

This study explores the third language imitation of Spanish rhotics and laterals by Akan-English bilingual children and adults. Specifically, it examines this phenomenon, with respect to (i) first language transfer in the imitation of the Spanish rhotic contrast, (ii) the effect of orthographic input on the imitation of the rhotic-lateral contrast in Spanish as a third language, and (iii) the effect of age of acquisition via the inclusion of a comparative analysis between children and adults. Whereas rhotics and laterals are contrastive in most varieties of Spanish and English, they are in free variation in Akan. The participants in this study consisted of 20 Akan-English bilinguals between the ages of 8–10 years and 18–55. The conditions included an imitation task with auditory input only and another with orthographic input. The results demonstrated evidence of L1 transfer, a positive effect of orthography, and a better performance of children. This study has important implications as it provides data from an understudied population in the field of L2/L3 speech learning.

We investigated first-language (L1) orthographic effects on second-language (L2) speech production in Korean–English and Farsi–English bilinguals, as compared to English monolinguals. We used a word-reading and word-naming task to compare the production of the single grapheme (letter) (e.g, ) with the digraph (e.g., ). An acoustic analysis of 600 tokens in Praat revealed that Korean–English bilinguals exhibited significantly longer [m:] productions compared to English monolinguals, but that the Farsi–English bilinguals did not. Longer/geminate [m:] productions are attributed to orthography-induced L1 transfer. We concluded that orthography does affect L2 word-reading and phonological mental representations, even when the L1 and L2 may have different scripts. We recommend that L2 speech learning be treated as a multi-modal event.

This study examines the L2 production of the Italian (e.g. ‹tovaglia›, ‘tablecloth’) and (e.g. ‹agnello›, ‘lamb’) by English-speaking learners. Four beginner English-native speakers, one advanced English-native speakers and two Italian-native speakers completed a picture-naming task, a reading task and a language background questionnaire. An auditory and an acoustic analysis were conducted, where F1, F2, F3 and F4, and duration were measured. The results showed that both sounds are difficult for second language learners to acquire in a native-like manner. Moreover, each of these complex sounds may be produced as a sequence of two existing first languages sounds. Our findings have implications for L2 models of speech learning. We propose that a (marked) L2 sound may be produced as a sequence of existing L1 sounds.

Recent studies have provided evidence for both a positive and a negative effect of orthography on second language speech learning. However, not much is known about whether orthography can trigger a McGurk-like effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976) in second language speech learning. This study examined whether exposure to auditory and orthographic input may lead to a McGurk-like effect in naïve English-speaking participants learning a second language with Spanish phonology and orthography. Specifically, it reports on (a) production of non-target-like combinations such as [lj] as in [poljo] for -[pojo], where the auditory Spanish [j] and the first language English [l] that correspond to the shared digraph are integrated, and (b) fusion quantified in terms of [z] devoicing such as [z̥apito] for -[zapito]. Moreover, the effects of (a) type of grapheme-to-sound correspondence, (b) position in the word, and (c) condition of training and testing were examined. Participants were assigned to four groups: (a) auditory only, (b) orthography at training and production, (c) orthography at training, and (d) orthography at production. The positions included word-initial and word-medial. The grapheme-to-sound correspondences consisted of -[b], -[δ], -[s] and -[j]. Results were indicative of a McGurk-like effect only for the Spanish digraph . The highest rate of combination productions was attested in the orthography-training condition in the word-medial position.

This study investigates the second dialect production of Bogota Spanish /s/ in coda position by speakers of three different varieties of Colombian Spanish, who have been in contact in Ciudad Bolivar, a community located in Bogota, Colombia. The study has three aims. First, it will examine the role of phonetic distance in the acquisition of /s/ production. Second, it will determine the linguistic factors that constrain the realization of /s/ sound by the speakers of the three varieties studied. Third, it will look into the role of extralinguistic factors in the production of /s/. A total of 2322 tokens extracted from sociolinguistic interviews with 50 participants were acoustically analyzed in PRAAT. Statistical analyses were conducted using GoldVarb. The results showed the highest rate of [s] was produced by the speakers of the Eastern Andean variety, followed by the Western Andean, and then by the Coastal variety, suggesting that first dialect phonological processes may affect the acquisition of second dialect sounds. Consistent with previous studies that have examined /s/ variation and change, the linguistic factors position in the word, following segment, and syllable stress were also predictors of /s/ in second dialect production. The extralinguistic factors of age of arrival, age, and gender also had a significant effect on /s/ production in this study. Implications are discussed for models of second dialect speech learning.

Supplemental material, SUPPLEMENTARY_MATERIAL for Auditory-orthographic integration at the onset of L2 speech acquisition by Yasaman Rafat and Ryan A Stevenson in Language and Speech

Research shows that bilinguals tend to outperform monolinguals on certain cognitive tasks. While these advantages are typically attributed to differences in executive function, serial memory and syntactic processing may also help account for the differences observed between these populations. Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals on a variety of memory recall tasks, but it remains unclear whether these findings generalize to tasks involving serial memory. To answer this question, a digit recall task was administered to 11 monolingual and 11 bilingual participants. An algorithm was built to analyze the digit recall data and examine the mechanism underpinning the differences in memory performance in bilingual and monolingual participants. The algorithm found bilinguals making significantly fewer transpositional errors than monolinguals in the recall task (p < .005). One follow-up question pertained to the role of L1 syntactic processing as a possible predictor of serial memory error patterns. To test this question, a sentence recall task was administered to the same sample after completing the digit recall task. This task tested if bilingual exposure could predict syntactic memory error patterns. A Pearson's Chi-squared test found null results, leaving the transpositional error findings open for interpretation.

There is growing evidence that exposure to orthographic input affects second language phonological acquisition. This study examined the effects of auditory–orthographic interactions on second language assibilated/fricative rhotic productions of 20 naive English speakers of Spanish, with an acoustic–phonetic approach. The participants were assigned to two groups: auditory-only and auditory–orthographic. The results were indicative of a higher rate of both assibilated/fricative rhotics and approximant rhotics in the auditory–orthographic group. In addition, there was evidence that the acoustic input modulated the orthographic effects. However, the auditory-only group produced a higher rate of postalveolar sibilants. These results will be discussed in terms of (a) the salience-enhancing effect of the grapheme and (b) the overriding effect of orthography.

The main goal of this study was to determine whether the geminate-singleton consonant length contrast attrites across three different generations of Farsi-English-speaking bilinguals living in Canada. The secondary aim of the study was to shed light on the role of universal phonetic factors on the process of geminate-singleton length contrast attrition in the same population. The effect of manner/class of sounds and voicing were examined as predictors of geminate attrition in eight Farsi-English-speaking bilinguals living in Toronto forming three categories of generations: first generation, 1.5 generation and second generation. The inclusion of the 1.5 generation category is novel and it refers to children of immigrants who came to Canada between the ages of five to fourteen. The productions of the bilinguals were compared with the productions of three homeland variety controls. A word-naming task, which included 108 words was conducted. 2398 tokens were analyzed acoustically using PRAAT. Attrition was defined in terms of changes in mean duration of geminates relative to their singleton counter-parts and percentage geminate-singleton degemination/category overlap. Mean durations were then analyzed using a 3-way, mixed-model, repeated-measures ANOVA. Results showed that geminates attrite across different successive generations. Moreover, there was some evidence to suggest that geminate realization across generations patterns with typological patterns previously reported, showing that universal phonetic principles such as aerodynamic constraints/articulatory difficulty and acoustic salience also constrain geminate realization in bilingual Farsi-English speakers. However, there was no evidence to suggest that more marked geminates suffer a higher degree of attrition. This is the first study to examine the attrition of a typologically marked contrast, which considers the role of universal phonetic principles, markedness in an understudied bilingual community across different generations. O objetivo principal deste estudo foi determinar se o comprimento da consoante de geminate-singleton contrasta-se entre três gerações diferentes de bilíngues farsi-falantes de língua inglesa que vivem no Canadá. O objetivo secundário do estudo foi esclarecer o papel dos fatores fonéticos universais no processo de desgaste de contraste de geminate-singleton na mesma população. O efeito da maneira / classe de sons e expressões foi examinado como preditores de desgaste de geminados em oito bilíngues farsi-anglófonos que vivem em Toronto formando três categorias de gerações: primeira geração, 1,5 geração e segunda geração. A inclusão da categoria de geração 1.5 é nova e refere-se a crianças de imigrantes que vieram para o Canadá entre cinco a catorze anos. As produções dos bilíngues foram comparadas com as produções de três controles de variedades de pátria. Foi realizada uma tarefa de nomeação de palavras, que incluiu 108 palavras. 2398 tokens foram analisados acusticamente usando PRAAT. O desgaste foi definido em termos de mudanças na duração média dos geminados em relação às suas contrapartes singleton e porcentagem de geminate-singleton de duplicação / categoria de sobreposição. As durações médias foram então analisadas usando uma ANOVA de 3 modos, modelo misto e medidas repetidas. Os resultados mostraram que geminates attrite em diferentes gerações sucessivas. Além disso, houve algumas evidências que sugerem que a realização de geminação em padrões de gerações com padrões tipológicos previamente relatados, mostrando que os princípios fonéticos universais, como restrições aerodinâmicas / dificuldade articulatória e saliência acústica, também restringem a realização de geminados em falantes ingleses bilansos. No entanto, não havia evidências que sugerissem que geminados mais marcados sofrem um maior grau de atrito. Este é o primeiro estudo a examinar o desgaste de um contraste tipologicamente marcado, que considera o papel dos princípios fonéticos universais, o acentuamento em uma comunidade bilíngue não estudada em diferentes gerações.

This study investigates the production of / θ / and / ð / by three groups of English speakers in the community of Norwich, Ontario, Canada. English monolinguals, Heritage Dutch speakers, and late-learning Dutch L1 English speakers / θ / and / ð / production was measured in both naturalistic and reading tasks. Heritage Dutch speakers produce [θ] and [ð] at similar levels to Monolingual English speakers, the two groups use different allophone inventories especially in the initial position of / ð / and the medial-position of / θ /. This study suggests that despite having native English accents, Dutch Heritage speakers may manipulate the inherently variable English / θ / and / ð / production to communicate their Dutch cultural identity. Este estudo investiga a produção de / θ / e / ð / por três grupos de falantes de inglês na comunidade de Norwich, Ontário, Canadá. Monolíngues ingleses, falantes holandeses do Holandês e aprendentes de língua inglesa L1 inglesa / θ / e / ð / produção tardia foram medidos em tarefas de leitura e naturalistas. Os holandeses geram [θ] e [ð] em níveis semelhantes aos falantes ingleses monolíngues, os dois grupos usam diferentes inventários allófilos, especialmente na posição inicial de / ð / e a posição mediana de / θ /. Este estudo sugere que, apesar de ter acentos nativos de inglês, os falantes do Dutch Heritage podem manipular a variável / variável de inglês / θ / e / ð / para comunicar sua identidade cultural holandesa.

This study explores the phenomenon of language attrition. Specifically, we investigate the phonetic properties of consonant gemination across three groups of speakers of Palestinian Arabic: monolinguals (i.e., native speakers born in Palestine who have lived there their entire life, n = 5), late bilinguals (i.e., speakers born in Palestine who emigrated to the US during their teens, n = 6), and heritage speakers (i.e., speakers of Palestinian descent, born in the US and who speak both English and Arabic in their daily lives, n = 7). All speakers were in their mid-1920s. The participants were tested using a delayed word repetition task. The stimuli comprised 158 bi-syllabic Arabic minimal and near-minimal pairs (e.g., /ħam:aːm/ “bathroom” versus /ħama:m/ “pigeon”) including long and short stops, fricatives, and sonorants. We controlled for stress and syllabic position. Distractors were also included. The acoustic analysis is underway, and consists of manually aligning the target consonants, extracting the mean consonant duration and comparing it across groups. Additional measures include voicing, aspiration, and formant transitions. The findings will enable us to address the question whether universal phonetic factors (from the perspective of Markedness Theory) have an effect on degree of attrition by specifically comparing consonants from different voicing categories and manners of articulation.

This article reports on a study on the effect of orthography on L1-based phonological transfer in L2 production in 40 novice English-speaking learners of Spanish. In particular, the role of auditory-orthographic training and production and the influence of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences are examined. Data elicited via a picture-naming task reveal a robust effect of orthography on phonological transfer leading to non-target-like productions at the very beginning stages of second language acquisition. There is also strong evidence that condition of training and production as well as the type of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence determine the quantity of transfer. The difference in the quantity of transfer between the individual grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences is explained in light of salience and frequency effects. Pedagogical implications of the findings are also discussed.

This paper fills in the gap in the literature by providing an acoustic analysis of rhotics in Persian and considers the social variables gender and register. Through the acoustic analysis of 807 tokens, it demonstrates that that there are a number of rhotic variants in Persian in different positions in the word and finds evidence of degemination in coda position, against previous accounts. Furthermore, it suggests that on the one hand, Tehrani-Persian speaking men and women's rhotic production patterns with those of Arabic societies as men favor rhotics with more complex articulations. On the other hand it questions whether the behavior of Tehrani-Persian speaking men and women conforms to established sociolinguistic norms regarding prestige and gender.

Research shows that bilinguals tend to outperform monolinguals on certain cognitive and linguistic tasks. While the mechanism underlying these advantages remains unclear, it has been suggested that bilinguals have enhanced working memory, which may be responsible for some of the cognitive advantages observed in these populations. To examine the mechanism responsible for the bilingual advantage, serial working memory was compared between monolingual and bilingual undergraduate students using an adaptive digit span test (n = 77). The results of the test were algorithmically adjusted in order to reveal not only if each digit was correct, but also the existence of serial errors and digit scrambling. The results showed that bilinguals made significantly fewer transpositional errors compared to monolinguals (p < 0.02, d = 0.61). These results are thought to be caused by differences in attention to serial information between bilinguals and monolinguals. Another possible explanation for these results is that bilinguals implement more cognitive memory techniques (like chunking), and are therefore better at retaining serial information. The computational methods developed in this experiment will help guide paths for further research on the impact of syntactical co-activation on serial memory recall, and primacy/recency effects.