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Shared or Separate Representations? The Spanish Palatal Nasal in Early Spanish/English Bilinguals
| Content Provider | MDPI |
|---|---|
| Author | Stefanich, Sara Cabrelli, Jennifer |
| Copyright Year | 2020 |
| Description | The purpose of this study is to examine phonetic interactions in early Spanish/English bilinguals to see if they have established a representation for the Spanish palatal nasal /ɲ/ (e.g., /kaɲon/ cañón ‘canyon’) that is separate from the similar, yet acoustically distinct English /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /kænjn̩/ ‘canyon’). Twenty heritage speakers of Spanish completed a delayed repetition task in each language, in which a set of disyllabic nonce words were produced in a carrier phrase. English critical stimuli contained an intervocalic /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /dɛnjɑ/ ‘denya’) and Spanish critical stimuli contained intervocalic /ɲ/ (e.g., /deɲja/ ‘deña’). We measured the duration and formant contours of the following vocalic portion as acoustic indices of the /ɲ/~/n+j/ distinction. The duration data and formant contour data alike show that early bilinguals distinguish between the Spanish /ɲ/ and English /n+j/ in production, indicative of the maintenance of separate representations for these similar sounds and thus a lack of interaction between systems for bilinguals in this scenario. We discuss these discrete representations in comparison to previous evidence of shared and separate representations in this population, examining a set of variables that are potentially responsible for the attested distinction. |
| Starting Page | 50 |
| e-ISSN | 2226471X |
| DOI | 10.3390/languages5040050 |
| Journal | Languages |
| Issue Number | 4 |
| Volume Number | 5 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | MDPI |
| Publisher Date | 2020-11-02 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Languages Language Studies Heritage Bilingualism Early Bilingualism Spanish Phonology Phonetics Speech Production |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
