Fine-grained and probabilistic cross-linguistic influence in the pronunciation of cognates: Evidence from corpus-based spontaneous conversation and experimentally elicited data

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther L. Brown ◽  
Mark Amengual
Keyword(s):  
Puerto Rican ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Exemplar Model ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Spanish Word ◽  
Phonetic Categories ◽  
Cross Language

AbstractThe present study examines variable realizations of Spanish word-initial voiced and voiceless dental stops in Spanish-English cognate pairs. Employing a variationist approach to naturalistic data, we report significantly decreased likelihood of reduced articulations of word-initial /d/ in cognates in spontaneous bilingual Puerto Rican discourse, and no such probabilistic effect for cognates in monolingual Spanish of the same speech community. Using experimentally controlled elicited data of Spanish word-initial /t/, we also find evidence of significant fine-grained effects of English on the articulations of Spanish cognates in the form of lengthened VOT for Spanish-English bilinguals. These results indicate that cross-language lexical connections affect phonetic categories in the speech production of Spanish-English bilinguals. It is proposed that both fine-grained and probabilistic effects of the phonology of one language on another can be explained within the Exemplar Model of Lexical Representation.

Interlingual influence in bilingual speech: Cognate status effect in a continuum of bilingualism

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK AMENGUAL
Keyword(s):  
English Learners ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Exemplar Model ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Status Effect ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
Spanish Heritage Speakers ◽  
English Heritage

The present study investigates voice onset times (VOTs) to determine if cognates enhance the cross-language phonetic influences in the speech production of a range of Spanish–English bilinguals: Spanish heritage speakers, English heritage speakers, advanced L2 Spanish learners, and advanced L2 English learners. To answer this question, lexical items with considerable phonological, semantic, and orthographic overlap (cognates) and lexical items with no phonological overlap with their English translation equivalents (non-cognates) were examined. The results indicate that there is a significant effect of cognate status in the Spanish production of VOT by Spanish–English bilinguals. These bilinguals produced /t/ with longer VOT values (more English-like) in the Spanish production of cognates compared to non-cognate words. It is proposed that the exemplar model of lexical representation (Bybee, 2001; Pierrehumbert, 2001) can be extended to include bilingual lexical connections by which cognates facilitate phonetic interference in the bilingual mental lexicon.

Phonological Evidence of Interlingual Exemplar Connections

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther L. Brown ◽  
David Harper
Keyword(s):  
New Mexico ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Exemplar Model ◽  
Translation Equivalent ◽  
Spanish Word ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Similarity Effect

AbstractWe conduct quantitative analyses of 5,569 tokens of Spanish word-final /s/ in the speech of Spanish/English bilinguals and monolinguals to test the Exemplar Model of Lexical Representation. We establish that reduction (aspiration, deletion) of word-final /s/ in the speech of New Mexico is significantly lower in Spanish words whose English translation equivalent has a word-final /s/ and significantly higher in words with no word-final sibilant in their English counterpart. The same crosslinguistic similarity effect is not found in a nearly identical (monolingual) variety of Spanish (Chihuahua), owing, we argue, to the lack of influence from word-final /s/ in English. Results of variable rule analyses reveal that the bilingual exemplar connections are not uniform across all words. Rather, the crosslinguistic ties are strongest where more phonological, orthographic, or semantic overlap can be posited (i.e., cognates). Results provide evidence of bilingual lexical connections in support of an exemplar model of lexical representation.

Effects of acoustic–phonetic detail on cross-language speech production

2014 ◽  
Vol 77 ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Wilson ◽  
Lisa Davidson ◽  
Sean Martin
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Phonetic Detail ◽  
Cross Language

Evidence for long-term cross-language repetition priming in low fluency Chinese–English bilinguals

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
LI LI ◽  
LEI MO ◽  
RUIMING WANG ◽  
XUEYING LUO ◽  
ZHE CHEN
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Implicit Memory ◽  
Explicit Memory ◽  
Repetition Priming ◽  
First Language ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Priming Paradigm ◽  
Cross Language

Previous studies have found that proficiency in a second language affects how the meanings of words are accessed. Support for this hypothesis is based on data from explicit memory tasks with bilingual participants who know two languages that are relatively similar phonologically and orthographically (e.g., Dutch–English, French–English). The present study tested this hypothesis with Chinese–English bilinguals using an implicit memory task – the cross-language repetition priming paradigm. Consistent with the result of Zeelenberg, R. and Pecher, D. (2003), we obtained reliable effects of long-term cross-language repetition priming using a conceptual implicit memory task. Overall, the four experiments support the Revised Hierarchical Model as they demonstrate that low fluency bilinguals can only access the conceptual representation of the second language via the lexical representation of the first language.

scholarly journals Assessing the presence of lexical competition across languages: Evidence from the Stroop task

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALBERT COSTA ◽  
BÁRBARA ALBAREDA ◽  
MIKEL SANTESTEBAN
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Stroop Task ◽  
Interference Effect ◽  
Lexical Competition ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Language Identity ◽  
Paradoxical Effects ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Cross Language

Do the lexical representations of the non-response language enter into lexical competition during speech production? This issue has been studied by means of the picture–word interference paradigm in which two paradoxical effects have been observed. The so-called CROSS-LANGUAGE IDENTITY EFFECT (Costa, Miozzo and Caramazza, 1999) has been taken as evidence against cross-linguistic lexical competition. In contrast, the so-called PHONO-TRANSLATION EFFECT (Hermans, Bongaerts, De Bot and Schreuder, 1998) has been interpreted as revealing lexical competition across languages. In this article, we assess the reliability of these two effects by testing Spanish–Catalan highly-proficient bilinguals performing a Stroop task. The results of the experiment are clear: while the cross-language identity facilitation effect is reliably replicated, the phono-translation interference effect is absent from the Stroop task. From these results, we conclude that we should be cautious when drawing strong conclusions about the presence of competition across languages based on the phono-translation effect observed in the picture–word interference paradigm.

scholarly journals Leveraging the uniformity framework to examine crosslinguistic similarity for long-lag stops in spontaneous Cantonese-English bilingual speech

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khia A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Phonetic Convergence ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence ◽  
Cross Language

While crosslinguistic influence is widespread in bilingual speech production, it is less clear which aspects of representation are shared across languages, if any. Most prior work examines phonetically distinct yet phonologically similar sounds, for which phonetic convergence suggests a cross-language link within individuals [1]. Convergence is harder to assess when sounds are already similar, as with English and Cantonese initial long-lag stops. Here, the articulatory uniformity framework [2, 3, 4] is leveraged to assess whether bilinguals share an underlying laryngeal feature across languages, and describe the nature of cross-language links. Using the SpiCE corpus of spontaneous Cantonese-English bilingual speech [5], this paper asks whether Cantonese-English bilinguals exhibit uniform voice-onset time for long-lag stops within and across languages. Results indicate moderate patterns of uniformity within-language—replicating prior work [2, 6]—and weaker patterns across languages. The analysis, however, raises many questions, as correlations were generally lower compared to prior work, and talkers did not adhere to expected ordinal VOT relationships by place of articulation. Talkers also retained clear differences for /t/ and /k/, despite expectations of similarity. Yet at the same time, more of the overall variation seems to derive from individual-specific differences. While many questions remain, the uniformity framework shows promise.

Cross-Language Transfer and Attentional Control in Early Bilingual Speech

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Lisa Verbeek ◽  
Constance Vissers ◽  
Mirjam Blumenthal ◽  
Ludo Verhoeven
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Attentional Control ◽  
Clinical Importance ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
L2 Development ◽  
Cross Language ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Speech Perception And Production

Purpose: This study investigated the roles of cross-language transfer of first language (L1) and attentional control in second-language (L2) speech perception and production of sequential bilinguals, taking phonological overlap into account. Method: Twenty-five monolingual Dutch-speaking and 25 sequential bilingual Turkish–Dutch-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds were tested using picture identification tasks for speech perception in L1 Turkish and L2 Dutch, single-word tasks for speech production in L1 and L2, and a visual search task for attentional control. Phonological overlap was manipulated by dividing the speech tasks into subsets of phonemes that were either shared or unshared between languages. Results: In Dutch speech perception and production, monolingual children obtained higher accuracies than bilingual peers. Bilinguals showed equal performance in L1 and L2 perception but scored higher on L1 than on L2 production. For speech perception of shared phonemes, linear regression analyses revealed no direct effects of attention and L1 on L2. For speech production of shared phonemes, attention and L1 directly affected L2. When exploring unshared phonemes, direct effects of attentional control on L2 were demonstrated not only for speech production but also for speech perception. Conclusions: The roles of attentional control and cross-language transfer on L2 speech are different for shared and unshared phonemes. Whereas L2 speech production of shared phonemes is also supported by cross-language transfer of L1, L2 speech perception and production of unshared phonemes benefit from attentional control only. This underscores the clinical importance of considering phonological overlap and supporting attentional control when assisting young sequential bilinguals' L2 development.

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