L1 Prosody Attrition Among Spanish-English Bilinguals
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Running head: L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS L1 Prosody Attrition Among Colombian Spanish-English Bilinguals: A Case Study on Vowel Reduction Pieter Winnemuller (800183) Master’s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences Business Communication & Digital Media School of Humanities Tilburg University Supervisor: L. van Maastricht MA Second reader: Dr. E. Oversteegen December 2017 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS Abstract The process of losing or changing the first language (L1) as a result of acquiring a second language (L2) is called L1 attrition. This phenomenon has been researched in many linguistic areas, yet a relatively underexposed research area is that on prosody (i.e., the rhythmic and melodic patterns that determine, for example, intonation, rhythm and stress placement). The current study investigated whether prosodic L1 attrition occurred in the speech of Sofía Vergara, a Colombian Spanish-English bilingual who has been living and working in an L2 environment for approximately two decades. A semi-automatic acoustic analysis was conducted to determine whether vowel reduction (i.e., producing unstressed vowels with a shorter duration and a different vowel quality than stressed vowels) occurred in her L1 Spanish speech to a greater extent than in the speech of Spanish monolinguals, as measured in earlier studies. The results from this analysis show that vowel reduction did occur in her L1 speech: the unstressed Spanish /a/, /i/ and /o/ vowels were significantly reduced in duration, and the unstressed /a/ and /e/ showed significant differences in vowel quality vis-à-vis stressed vowels. However, vowel reduction did not occur to a greater extent than in the speech of monolingual Spanish speakers. 1 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS Table of Contents Introduction 4 Theoretical Background 7 Language Attrition 7 L2 attrition 7 L1 attrition 8 Types of L1 Attrition 9 Prosody 12 Segmental properties of speech 12 Suprasegmental properties of speech 12 Prosodic L1 attrition 14 Prosodic Differences Between Spanish and English 17 Vowel reduction 17 Vowel reduction in Spanish 20 Method 24 Case Subject 24 L1 Colombian Spanish Varieties 24 Materials 26 Prosodic Analysis 26 Results 31 Vowel Duration 32 Stressed vowel duration in earlier studies 33 Unstressed vowel duration in earlier studies 34 2 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS Degree of durational reduction 36 Vowel Quality 37 Stressed vowel quality in earlier studies 38 Unstressed vowel quality in earlier studies 40 Degree of qualitative reduction 41 Discussion 44 Durational Reduction 44 Qualitative Reduction 46 Vowel Reduction in General 48 Limitations And Strengths 50 Conclusion 53 References 54 Appendix 62 3 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS L1 Prosody Attrition Among Spanish-English Bilinguals: A Case Study on Vowel Reduction When an individual is in the process of learning a second language (L2), it is not unknown for their native language (L1) to exert influence on their L2. An L2 learner might, for example, have difficulties with sounds that are pronounced differently (or might not even exist) in their L1, which could result in an L1-accented production of L2 sounds. Such inherent differences between the two languages might complicate the learning process, when features of the L1 are inappropriately copied onto the L2 that is being learned. Even when the L2 is spoken on a regular basis, traces of the L1 could still be found during L2 use. This has become known as ´forward language transfer´ and has been widely researched (see Ellis, 1994; Gardner, Lalonde, & MacPherson, 1985; Gass, 1979). However, this process in the opposite direction (i.e., the transfer of linguistic elements from the L2 back to one’s L1 after a high proficiency has been achieved in the L2) is a relatively new topic of research (see also: Kartushina, Frauenfelder & Golestani, 2016; Pavlenko, 2000). The process of L1 loss or decay through L2 acquisition has been called L1 attrition and can be evident in many linguistic areas, such as the lexicon (e.g., Laufer, 2003; Olshtain & Barzilay, 1991), syntax (e.g., Montrul, 2005), and semantics (e.g., Ardila, 2005). An example of L1 attrition that appeals to the imagination is a language phenomenon described by Ardila (2005) as ‘Spanglish’: an anglicized form of Spanish that is found in some heterogeneous linguistic communities in the United States. L1 Spanish speakers who have lived in the U.S. for a considerable amount of time will start to show typical English linguistic constructions in their L1, like the following examples with regard to syntax (an unnecessary use of pronouns) and phonetics (replacing /d/ for /t/ to resemble an English pronunciation): (1) He estado pensando (Spanish) I have been thinking (English) 4 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS Yo he estado pensando (Spanglish) (2) estadística (Spanish) statistics (English) estatística (Spanglish) A linguistic area that has received relatively little attention with regard to L1 attrition is prosody. Prosody has been defined in various ways, but most researchers agree that it deals with the suprasegmental level of speech (Cutler, Dahan & Van Donselaar, 1997; Rietveld & Van Heuven, 2009). In other words, prosody entails all speech sounds that transcend the segmental level of speech, which is the level that deals with individual sound units or phonemes (i.e., vowels and consonants). Prosody is realized by multiple cues, such as pitch (whether a tone is high or low; measured as the fundamental frequency, in hertz), intensity (loudness, measured in decibel), length (the duration of a particular segment) and timbre (the quality of sound, measured as a combination of frequencies, in Hz). Combined, they constitute different properties of speech, such as intonation, rhythm or stress placement. These prosodic properties, in turn, serve a variety of linguistic functions. For example, stress placement (typically realized by a longer duration, increased loudness and a change in pitch) may be used to place emphasis on a specific part of an utterance to indicate its importance. Intonation, in turn, can distinguish a question from a declarative utterance: in many languages, a rising of pitch indicates a question, whereas a lowering of pitch indicates a declarative statement. Prosodic properties such as these, among many others, are minimally represented in grammar but carry communicative information. Although there are many studies focusing on L2 prosody production (e.g., Gabriel & Kireva, 2014; Trofimovich & Baker, 2006; Van Maastricht, Krahmer, Swerts & Prieto, 2016; 5 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS Verdugo, 2002), there are few studies that deal with the opposite effect: the influence of L2 on L1 prosody. This is unfortunate, since prosody has proven to play an important role in the perception of speech. Various studies have pointed out the effects that prosodic properties can have on a perceived foreign accent (or ‘accentedness’) and intelligibility, by L1 listeners. Utterances containing inappropriate prosodic characteristics (i.e., speech in language X, manipulated to match the prosodic properties of language Y) causes them to be perceived as more foreign-accented and less intelligible (Boula de Mareüil & Vieru-Dimulescu, 2006; Major, 2010; Quené & Van Delft, 2010; Tajima, Port & Dalby, 1997; Van Maastricht, Krahmer & Swerts, 2016). An example of a durational prosodic attribute that distinguishes different languages is vowel reduction: the shortening of unstressed vowels in contrast to stressed vowels, which are not shortened. Vowel reduction is employed fairly differently among languages. For example, it is extensively used in Germanic languages such as English, whereas it occurs to a much lesser extent in Romance language such as Spanish (Delattre, 1969), which makes a comparison on vowel reduction between these two languages particularly interesting for L1 prosody attrition research. Therefore, the current study investigates whether prosody is subject to L1 attrition. The influence of L2 English on L1 Spanish will be investigated through a case study. Speech fragments by Sofía Vergara, an L1 speaker of Spanish who has become highly proficient in English, will be analyzed to determine whether two decades of living in her L2 environment (i.e., the United States), will have caused her to show prosodic L1 attrition when she speaks her L1 Spanish. Specifically, we will investigate whether Vergara employs vowel reduction in her L1 Spanish to a larger extent than monolingual Spanish speakers do. Before turning to the details of the current study, an overview of research on language attrition and prosody will be given. 6 L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS Theoretical Background Language Attrition Language attrition can be defined as the loss or decay of a language (or elements thereof) due to insufficient use, or through the influence of another language (Paradis, 2004; Pavlenko, 2000). It can be approached in various ways. Köpke and Schmid (2004) refer to the ‘Van Els taxonomy’ (Van Els, 1986), as can be seen in Figure 1, to describe four different types of attrition. The division is based on two factors: the language that is lost (L1 or L2) and the linguistic environment, i.e., the dominant language spoken in the environment in which the loss occurs (L1 or L2). This creates multiple types of language attrition, of which two (L1 and L2 attrition)