L1 Prosody Attrition Among Spanish-English Bilinguals

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.

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

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

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)

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;

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.

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) will to be further defined.

Linguistic environment Language lost L1 L2

L1 Dialect loss L1 attrition

Language reversion L2 L2 attrition (in the elderly)

Figure 1. The ‘Van Els taxonomy’. Reprinted from Köpke & Schmid (2004, p. 5)

L2 attrition. When an L2 is lost in an L1 speaking environment, we speak of L2 attrition (e.g., having learned an L2 in school but losing your proficiency as time goes on due to insufficient use). When language attrition gained popularity during the 1980s, the focus was primarily on L2 attrition (Gass, 1979; Gass & Selinker, 1983; Lambert & Freed, 1982;

Weltens & Cohen, 1989; Weltens, De Bot & Van Els, 1986). These studies tended to focus solely on errors in L2 production, accompanied by examples of L1 elements being incorrectly incorporated in L2 speech. Later, studies on L2 acquisition made a clearer distinction between what we now consider positive or negative language transfer: one’s L1 causing errors in the

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

L2 (negative), or one’s L1 facilitating the L2 learning process due to, for example, similar patterns in both languages (positive) (Ellis, 1994; Gass, 2013). Since then, a substantial amount of research has been dedicated to both positive and negative transfer effects from L1 to L2 within various linguistic sub-fields such as syntax (e.g., Nitschke, Kidd & Serratrice,

2010), lexicon (e.g., Kuhberg, 1992), and phonetics (e.g., Flege, 1987), including prosody

(e.g., Van Maastricht et al., 2016).

Initially, the most commonly made comparison in L2 attrition research was the one between the proficiency of late L2 learners and monolingual speakers. However, some researchers found that being a proficient bilingual left traces in both one’s L1 and L2. Flege

(1987), for example, investigated the speech of L1 French speakers, highly experienced in L2

English, and L1 English speakers with varying degrees of experience with L2 French. The results showed that (to a varying degree) both bilingual groups were able to successfully produce new L2 phonemes, unfamiliar to their L1, on a nativelike level. However, they were more or less restricted in producing L2 phonemes that have a similar sounding counterpart in their L1, which resulted in some phonemes (both L1 and L2) being produced on an intermediate level by both groups. Research like this made the comparison of bilinguals against monolinguals seem illogical, because even proficient bilinguals might never fully acquire some features of an L2, or might have changed the production of their L1 phonemes during L2 learning. The fact that L2 learning seemed to cause bidirectional transfer (i.e., both languages influencing each other) caused a growing interest in the influence of L2 on L1

(Schmid, 2013).

L1 attrition. Whereas L2 attrition describes the process of L2 loss, L1 attrition could be seen as the same process taking place in the opposite direction: ‘losing’ or changing

(aspects of) your L1 caused by a prominent use of the L2. During the first years of language attrition research, L1 attrition was given relatively little attention. When sporadically

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS researched, it usually focused on individual cases of language or dialect loss (Weltens et al.,

1986). Around 1990, L1 attrition as a research field began to grow and the differences between language shift (being intergenerational) and language attrition (which is intragenerational) became clearer (Fillmore, 1991; Seliger & Vago, 1991). The former describes language loss occurring between two different generations due to, for example, a shift in language education or a new generation adjusting to globalization by leaving a local language or dialect behind. The latter described language loss within the same generation, or even the same person, due to L2 learning and becoming bilingual. The case of immigrant communities, whose use of L1 and contact with the L1 speaking community decreased, further encouraged research into sociolinguistic variables concerning L1 attrition during this decade (Cook, 2003; De Bot, Fillmore, 1991; Gommans & Rossing, 1991; Olshtain &

Barzilay, 1991; Seliger & Vago, 1991; Stoessel, in Pavlenko, 2000). More recently, L1 attrition has been investigated and established in various topics within linguistics such as syntax, lexicon and phonology. In the following section, relevant examples of this research will be discussed briefly to further illustrate the process of L1 attrition.

Types of L1 Attrition

L1 attrition has shown to occur in many linguistic fields. Tsimpli, Sorace, Heycock and Filiaci (2004) conducted production and interpretation tasks to investigate how L1 Greek and L1 Italian experienced speakers of L2 English would construct or interpret certain grammatical features that are only allowed in either L1 Greek or Italian, or L2 English. Null- subject constructions, as shown for Italian in (3), and post-verbal subject constructions, as shown in (4), were used in the tasks. Both constructions are allowed in Greek and Italian, whereas in English it is impossible to say * left when he left is meant, or to let the subject follow the verb (* left John).

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

(3)  E’ partito

PRON be-3s gone

‘He left’

(4) E’ partito Gianni

be-3s gone John

‘John left’

Their results show that the L1 Greek speakers preferred to use a preverbal subject, which is associated with their L2 English, to a greater extent than the Greek monolingual control group. Moreover, the interpretation of null versus overt subject pronouns was also vulnerable to attrition: overt pronouns were preferred more strongly to refer back to a subject by the experimental groups than the monolingual controls. Since null-subject languages like Greek and Italian often allow for pronouns to be dropped, the preference for an overt pronoun

(instead of a null pronoun) can be seen as evidence for syntactic attrition among the bilingual experimental groups.

Evidence for lexical L1 attrition has also been found. Schmid and Jarvis (2014) compared L1 speech of L1 German experienced speakers of L2 Dutch or English, and

German monolinguals. Results of several speech production tasks showed that the bilinguals experienced difficulties with lexical diversity, distribution and sophistication as well as verbal fluency, compared to monolingual speakers of German. The main differences between the L2

Dutch and L2 English attriter groups were small and experiments involving informal free speech resulted in clearer differences between groups than formal language tasks.

With regard to phonetic L1 attrition, Kartushina, Frauenfelder and Golestani (2016) reviewed literature about the influence of L2 on L1 phonetic production, focusing on

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS modulating factors related to the L1 (e.g., the frequency of L1 use after L2 acquisition) and

L2 (e.g., the age of onset of L2 acquisition, or the degree of immersion in an L2-speaking environment). For example, a relatively early age of onset of L2 acquisition has shown to cause a change in L1 vowel pronunciation. Research by Guion (2003) indicated that L1

Quichua speakers with an early age of onset (i.e., between the ages of 5 and 7) caused a different pronunciation of the L1 Quichua /ɪ/ vowel. The author suggests that this might be caused by the need to overcompensate: since the L2 Spanish /e/ vowel sounds similar to the

L1 Quichua /ɪ/ vowel, an ‘early bilingual speaker might change their pronunciation of the L1

Quichua /ɪ/ in order to enhance the difference between the otherwise similar sounding vowels.

In contrast, the bilinguals with a relatively late age of onset of L2 Spanish (i.e., from the age of 9) tended to equate the L2 Spanish /e/ and the L1 Quichua /ɪ/, resulting in an L1 production of the L2 vowel. However, results from a study by Barlow (2014) contradict these findings, as late L1 Spanish-L2 English bilinguals showed signs of L1 phonological attrition when producing the /l/-phoneme in L1 Spanish in accordance with the L2 English norm. The early bilinguals in this study, on the other hand, showed no signs of phonological transfer from the

L2 to the L1. A factor that has caused this same effect in the speech of late bilinguals is a prolonged period of immersion in an L2-speaking environment (Flege, 1987). When the L1 continues to be spoken on a frequent basis, this generally results in a more L1-accented pronunciation of L2 sounds. However, when the L2 is dominantly used, this often results in little to no L1-accented speech, yet the native L1 sounds will shift towards the L2 norm.

(Mora, Keidel & Flege, 2015).

L1 attrition effects are visible in many linguistic areas, as the results from the aforementioned studies have shown. In production, as well as interpretation, the L1 changes after the acquisition of an L2 within various areas including syntax, lexicon and phonetics.

However, as was the case with research on L2 acquisition, L1 attrition with respect to prosody

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS tends to be a topic that receives relatively little attention despite its proven effects on communication between speakers (see also: Van Maastricht et al., 2016). Before we delve further into prosody attrition research, a clear definition of prosody will be given.

Prosody

Segmental properties of speech. Speech can be seen as a sequence of sounds, or

‘segments’. These segments (often called phonemes) can be further divided into two categories: vowels and consonants. Each phoneme has its own unique characteristics for articulation. For example, vowels and consonants can best be distinguished by the opening and narrowing of the vocal tract, through which air flows during speech. Consonants are produced through an obstruction of the air flow by closing (or nearly closing) the vocal tract at a specific place. Some are produced by placing the front of the tongue against the hard palate (/l/), while others require the back of the tongue to do so (/k/). Vowels, on the other hand, always involve an open vocal tract. The way this is done (the size and shape of the open mouth, as well as the position of the tongue, lips, and lower jaw) determines the different sounds a vowel can have. In phonetics, this is called ‘vowel quality’, and it is what distinguishes, for example, the /iː/ in ‘sheep’ from the /ɪ/ in ‘ship’ (IPA, 1999; Wells, 2006).

This difference is observable by measuring the range of frequencies (or formants, in Hz) within a phoneme, which makes it possible to distinguish different phonemes (Delattre, 1969).

However, some information behind an utterance cannot be derived through these segmental properties alone (i.e., the specific sequence of vowels and consonants making up the words), but is rather conveyed by the larger phonetic characteristics of speech, i.e., its prosody.

Suprasegmental properties of speech. As Wells (2006) mentions, we often complain, ‘It is not what you said, it is the way that you said it’: words that seem harmless on paper can sound offensive once spoken out loud. This is because prosodic properties like pitch, loudness and speech rate determine, among others, the rhythm and intonational pattern

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS of speech (Dauer, 1983; Wells, 2006). Intonation, in turn, can contribute to the meaning of an utterance (Hirst, 2005; Ward, 2004). For instance, in many languages, a final raising of pitch is associated with a question, while a final lowering of pitch is associated with a declarative statement. Some languages require only a change in pitch to indicate whether an utterance is meant as a question or a statement; a raising of pitch at the end of the sentence can be enough for a statement to change into a question. The examples in (5) and (6) illustrate this for

Spanish:

(5) Habla español.

‘He/she speaks Spanish.’

(6) ¿Habla español?

‘Does he/she speak Spanish?’

Sarcasm is another example of meaning through intonation. When someone says ‘It’s so exciting!’ in a bored tone of voice, prosody usually outweighs semantics in our interpretation of the meaning of the utterance, which leads us to believe that the person is not excited at all but rather quite bored. Stress placement can serve another prosodic function. It can, for example, reinforce the prominence of a certain word in relation to other words within a sentence. By doing this, the listener can be instructed on what parts of an utterance are to be considered important (Rietveld & Van Heuven, 2009). Consider the following two sentences, where bold text indicates the placement of stress:

(7) Jack gave the book to Mary.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

(8) Jack gave the book to Mary.

By putting stress on the word ‘Jack’, one might indicate that this is an answer to the question

‘Who gave the book to Mary?’, but not to ‘What did Jack give to Mary?’, whereas the function of stress on the word ‘book’ might be to point out which object was given to Mary by Jack, but is unsuitable as a response to the question ‘Who gave the book to Mary?’. Stress

(realized by increased loudness, pitch and duration) can thus structure the information within the sentence, and focuses the attention of the listener on what is most important, without changing a single phoneme. Prosody is therefore ‘suprasegmental’: it transcends the segmental (phonemic) level of speech. In some languages, prosody can also serve a lexical function. In Mandarin Chinese, the sound /ma/ can mean ‘mother’, ‘hemp’, ‘horse’ or ‘to scold’, depending on the movement of pitch (Rietveld & Van Heuven, 2009). In English, the words ‘billow’ and ‘below’ (as illustrated by Wells, 2006, p. 3) are examples of a similar effect where words can be distinguished just by a different placement of stress.

Before we focus on vowel reduction as the prosodic subject of the current study, several studies within the field of prosodic L1 attrition research will be given in the following section, in order to indicate their importance and that of the current study for prosodic attrition research.

Prosodic L1 attrition. Similar to the various linguistic areas that have already been discussed, various studies have indicated that L1 attrition occurs for prosodic elements of speech as well. Mennen (2004) investigated cross-linguistic differences in the production of prenuclear rises (i.e., the rise in pitch from the start of a stressed syllable’s initial consonant) by five L1 Dutch experienced speakers of L2 Greek and two control groups consisting of five

L1 speakers of Greek and Dutch. Greek and Dutch share the same prosodic pattern in prenuclear rises, but a different timing. In Dutch, the peak generally occurs earlier (i.e., within

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS the accented vowel) compared to Greek (where the peak falls in the following unaccented vowel). Also, in Dutch, the peak of the prenuclear rise is influenced by the length of the vowel in the accented syllable: a long vowel results in an earlier peak, and a short vowel results in a later peak. In Greek, the length of the accented vowel has no such influence. The results indicated an occurrence of bidirectional transfer between the two languages. On the one hand, four out of five bilinguals produced a prenuclear rise in their L2 Greek with a peak as early as the L1 Dutch monolingual control group, and significantly earlier than the L1

Greek controls. Moreover, the differences in peak timing between long and short accented vowels were significantly neutralized in the L1 speech of the bilinguals, which suggests an influence of the L2 on the L1 production of tonal alignment, and thus L1 attrition.

The same prenuclear rise was researched by De Leeuw, Mennen and Scobbie (2012) among ten late L1 German bilinguals of L2 Canadian English, and two control groups of ten

L1 German and L1 English speakers. They confirmed that this rise usually occurs earlier in

Canadian English (as well as British English) than in German. The L1 German bilinguals showed an earlier start of the prenuclear rise than the German monolinguals, but the end of the rise did not occur earlier than in the German control group. This provides evidence for L1 attrition regarding the start of the rise, but not for the end. There were individual differences among the participants, however. Some showed a prenuclear rise consistent with the English norm, whereas the prenuclear rise of others fell completely within the German norm (thus showing no attrition effects). According to the authors, this might be partly explained by the age of onset of the participants: those who moved to Canada at a relatively younger age were more likely to perform within the L2 English norm while speaking L1 German, and thus showing more signs of L1 attrition, than those who started L2 acquisition at a later age.

Mayr, Price and Mennen (2012) conducted a unique case study involving two Dutch monozygotic twin sisters, one of which emigrated to the United Kingdom thirty years ago,

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS considerably decreasing the contact with her L1. The changes in L1 accent were examined by comparing her speech to that of her twin sister who remained in an L1-speaking environment.

The prosodic subject of analysis was voice onset time (VOT). This is defined as the length of time between the release of a stop consonant (e.g., the moment after the vocal tract was obstructed because of closing of the lips, for example to produce the plosives /p/ or /b/) and the vibration of the vocal folds (the onset of voicing). VOT in word-initial plosives and vowel production were analyzed to assess the differences between the speech of L1 between the two sisters. The emigrated sister showed traces of L1 attrition through consistently longer VOT values when producing Dutch voiceless plosives. Moreover, her pronunciation of L1 Dutch vowels had shifted towards a more open realization, resulting in higher frequencies, which is more in line with the British English norm (Mayr et al., 2012). In this case, the long-term contact with an L2 environment had caused the emigrated sister’s pronunciation to change on some levels compared to her twin.

In an exploratory study regarding intonation patterns by Russian-English bilinguals,

Andrews (1993, 1999) found that intonation can also be subject to L1 attrition. Interviews were set up with twelve L1 Russian speakers of English, ten of which were born in the Soviet

Union and moved to the United States during late childhood or early adolescence, and two were born in the United States to Russian-speaking families. The participants were asked to describe a series of pictures and elaborate on their feelings regarding the pictures. The intonation patterns of the bilinguals were analyzed and compared to known classificatory systems for English intonation. The comparison shows that all bilinguals had adopted several typical English intonation patterns in their L1. Among these were rising tones in yes/no questions and falling tones in declarative utterances, whereas the intonation in these two situations is expected to go in the opposite direction according to the L1 Russian norm.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Moreover, most of the bilinguals showed a rise-fall construction within accented syllables, whereas in Russian the accented syllable itself would only contain a fall.

Studies like the aforementioned give an insight into the diversity of phenomena that have been researched within L1 prosody attrition research. Moreover, these studies indicate that L1 prosody attrition affects different prosodic elements (e.g., prenuclear rises, voice onset time, intonation patterns) in the speech of bilinguals with various linguistic backgrounds (e.g.,

L1 Dutch, L1 German, L1 Russian) and with varying L2 experiences (e.g., L2 Greek, L2

English). In the current study, a possible influence of L2 English on L1 Spanish will be investigated. In the following section, the rhythmic differences between Spanish and English will be briefly set out, to indicate the relevance of research on vowel reduction differences between these two languages.

Prosodic Differences Between Spanish and English

When two languages belong to different language families, this is often reflected in various prosodic differences. Two languages that allow for a good comparison of potential prosodic attrition are Spanish and English, as earlier research has shown that Romance and

Germanic languages (like Spanish and English, respectively) can be distinguished by L1 listeners solely by rhythmic properties (Kolly & Dellwo, 2014; Nazzi, Bertoncini & Mehler,

1998; Ramus, Dupoux & Mehler, 2003) or intonational features (Hagmann & Dellwo, 2014) alone. The already mentioned VOT, for example, is one of the prosodic features that sets

Spanish apart from English (Magliore & Green, 1999; Piccinini & Arvaniti, 2015; Schmidt &

Flege, 1996). Another notable prosodic difference between Spanish and English is vowel reduction: the reduction of duration and quality of vowels in unstressed syllables vis-à-vis stressed syllables.

Vowel reduction. While vowel reduction is employed extensively in English, it occurs to a far lesser extent in Spanish (Bolinger, 1965; Delattre, 1969). With regard to

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS duration, unstressed vowels in English are generally shortened in length, which is measurable by their duration in milliseconds. The quality of unstressed vowels also changes, as they are produced with a ‘neutral’ vowel at a mid-central position in the mouth, taking the form of (or approximating) schwa, /ə/, measurable by a change in formant frequencies of that phoneme in

Hz (Dauer, 1983; Delattre, 1969). An example of vowel reduction, presented in Flege and

Bohn (1989, p. 45), is the word pair ‘able – ability’. In ‘able’, the /a/ in the first syllable is stressed and pronounced as [ɛɪ]. Stress placement co-occurs with a longer duration of that vowel and a higher intensity. The /a/ in the first syllable of ‘ability’, however, is unstressed and is reduced to the mid central vowel called schwa [ə], shortened in both vowel quality and vowel length.

Because of these differences in vowel duration between stressed and unstressed syllables, the English language has been categorized in the past as a ‘stress-timed language’.

This means that the perceived interval between two stressed syllables is assumed to be fairly constant, irrespective of the amount of unstressed vowels that separates the two stressed syllables. Compared to English, Spanish does not reduce its vowels to the same extent: stress does not affect the quality of vowels as much as it does in English, nor are the five Spanish vowels (/a e i u o/) ever lengthened to change their meaning (Flege & Bohn, 1989). The latter is visible in English, where vowel lengthening causes otherwise identical sounds to sound different, like in the words ‘pull’ (/pʊl/) and ‘pool’ (/puːl/). Because of its less use of vowel reduction, Spanish was traditionally considered a syllable-timed language, in which each syllable tends to receive an equal amount of prominence, regardless of stress. However, acoustic measurements did not support this strict division into stress-timed and syllable-timed languages based on equal intervals (Bolinger, 1965; Delattre, 1969). This resulted in a view where languages can be placed somewhere within a continuous model of rhythm, judged by the extent of employing lengthening and shortening of stressed/accented syllables versus

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS unstressed/unaccented syllables. Rather than two categories, they can be considered relatively more or less stress-based, based on syllable structuring (Dauer, 1983). In an acoustic and articulatory study of American English, German, Spanish and French, Delattre (1969) points out that ‘in every language vowels are less distinctive, more obscure, in an unstressed syllable than in a stressed one’, judged by the measurements of the first and second vowel formants.

The reason for this is that in all of these languages, unstressed vowels are reduced both durationally and qualitatively, albeit not by the same amount and in the same manner. For example, the extent of vowel reduction by American English speakers proved to be much greater than by speakers of the other three languages, whereas it was smaller in Spanish compared to French and German (Delattre, 1969). The assumption can be made that no language is strictly syllable- or stress-timed. Still, English and Spanish have shown to differ greatly in vowel reduction and stress placement, as multiple studies have shown.

For example, Flege and Bohn (1989) have studied the use of vowel reduction and stress placement in English by L1 Spanish speakers who were adult L2 learners of English.

As Flege and Bohn mention, the use of full vowels instead of reduced ones in unstressed syllables is what makes Spanish-accented English speech very typical. The stress-timed rhythmic pattern of the English language is unfamiliar to native Spanish speakers and therefore difficult to acquire. Flege and Bohn assessed stress placement by Spanish learners of

English and L1 English speakers when producing morphologically similar word pairs, like the aforementioned ‘able-ability’, or ‘botany-botanical’. Stress placement was analyzed by measuring vowel duration (in milliseconds) and vowel intensity (in decibel), whereas vowel quality was assessed by monitoring tongue movements. Apart from this, both stress placement and vowel quality were also assessed by one of the researchers based on a transcription. As expected, all L1 English speakers reduced the vowels in the first (unstressed) syllables of the target words. Stressed syllables, on the other hand, were produced with a longer duration and

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS a greater intensity. The L1 Spanish speakers sometimes resembled the English speakers in terms of a similar duration of unstressed syllables, but they were not so consistent in changing the vowel quality. The researchers point out that there was a certain hierarchy of difficulty for

L2 learners. English word pairs like ‘able-ability’ might have been more frequently used and thus more familiar to native Spanish speakers’ lexicon than ‘Satan-satanic’, which resulted in a more successful and English-like pronunciation of the former pair, employing a similar duration and intensity difference even though the vowel quality was not reduced. Overall, the results indicate that the L1 Spanish learners of L2 English treat stress placement and vowel reduction as two independent phenomena: placing stress on a syllable (through a longer duration) posed less of a problem for the L2 learners than appropriately changing vowel quality. A study on stress perception by Ortega-Llebaria, Prieto and Vanrell (2008) confirms the importance of duration rather than vowel quality for stress placement in Spanish. Their results suggest that L1 Spanish speakers, in the absence of a change in pitch or qualitative vowel reduction, are able to detect stress solely on the basis of duration and overall intensity differences between adjacent syllables. This reflects the L2 English speech by L1 Spanish speakers in the study by Flege and Bohn (1989), who consistently shortened the duration of

L2 English vowels in unstressed syllables, rather than changing the vowel quality. In order to measure whether the current case study subject produces unstressed vowels with a shorter duration and different vowel quality in L1 Spanish compared to Spanish monolinguals, a monolingual Spanish norm needs to be established for comparison.

Vowel reduction in Spanish. There have been several studies investigating the

Spanish vowel system with regard to vowel quality and duration. The formants found in the current study will be compared to those found by Cervera, Miralles and González-Álvarez

(2001), Chládková, Escudero and Boersma (2011), Delattre (1969), Martínez Celdrán (1995).

In Chládková et al. (2011), both Iberian Spanish and Peruvian Spanish have been measured.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Of these measurements, only the data regarding Iberian Spanish will be included in this

analysis. The vowel durations will be compared to those found by Chládková et al. (2011),

Marín Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005). Unfortunately, no two of these studies are

alike since they differ in the type of participants or distinction of stressed and unstressed

vowels (as can be seen in Tables 1 and 2). With regard to vowel formants, Cervera et al.

(2001) and Delattre (1969) have measured vowels produced by male participants, whereas

Chládková et al. (2011) and Martínez Celdrán (1995) have measured vowel production by

female participants. Also, the study by Delattre (1969) is the only one that distinguishes

between stressed and unstressed vowels. With regard to vowel duration, Marín Gálvez (1995)

and Monroy-Casas (2005) distinguish between stressed and unstressed vowels, whereas

Chládková et al. (2011) have only included stressed vowels. Moreover, Marín Gálvez (1995)

has only measured the speech of male participants; Chládková et al. (2011) measured male

and female participants separately, and Monroy-Casas (2005) has taken the mean of male and

female speech when measuring vowel duration.

Table 1

Overview of first and second formant frequencies (in Hz) of Spanish vowels

Author(s) Stress /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ Participants

F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2

Delattre (1969) Stressed 750 1400 475 1950 300 2250 475 950 300 800 Male

Unstressed 650 1350 475 1800 300 2200 475 1000 300 800 (N=5)

Cervera et al. Stressed 718 1479 502 1872 331 2241 533 1156 376 773 Male

(2001) (N=10)

Martínez Stressed 886 1712 576 2367 369 2685 586 1201 390 937 Female

Celdrán (1995) (N=5)

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Author(s) Stress /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ Participants

F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2 F1 F2

Chládková et Stressed 801 1691 531 2159 400 2560 568 1155 431 921 Female al. (2011) (N=10)

Note. Chládková et al. (2011) uses the vowel V1 in CV1CV2-shaped words as the target

vowel, therefore these vowels will be treated as vowels in stressed position.

The results of those who distinguish between stressed and unstressed syllables show

that L1 Spanish speakers do in fact reduce their unstressed vowels. With regard to duration,

Marín Galvéz (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005) show that in Spanish, unstressed syllables

have a shorter duration than stressed syllables, albeit with a relatively small difference, as can

be seen in Table 2.

Table 2

Overview of duration (in ms) of Spanish vowels

Author(s) Stress /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ Participants

Monroy-Casas Stressed 85.90 76.47 79.68 73.47 67.75 Male (N=3);

(2005) Unstressed 65.40 55.60 54.00 54.40 48.65 female (N=2)

Chládková et al. Stressed 85.00 76.00 69.00 76.00 70.00 Female

(2011) (N=10)

Marín Gálvez Stressed 77.50 70.83 64.04 69.35 68.50 Male (N=2)

(1995) Unstressed 61.43 58.82 57.21 58.95 53.61

Given the importance of prosody as a cue for L2 speech perception and the fact that

L1 prosody attrition has been underexposed in the present body of attrition research, this

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS study will investigate whether vowel reduction is susceptible to attrition in L1 speech. This will be done by conducting a case study of a native Spanish speaker who has become highly proficient in English during adulthood. Earlier L1 attrition studies within fields such as syntax, lexicon and phonetics show to use dozens of participants as subjects and in control groups (Flege, 1987; Schmid & Jarvis, 2014; Tsimpli et al., 2004). However, when it comes to prosody attrition studies, using a small number of subjects (seven in Flege & Bohn, 1989; five in Mennen, 2004) or only one or two subjects per language (Boula de Mareüil & Vieru-

Dimulescu, 2006; Quene & Van Delft, 2010; Tajima et al., 1997) is not uncommon, especially in longitudinal L1 attrition experiments (Bullock & Gerfen, 2004; Mayr et al., 2012).

The aim of this study is to answer the following research question: ‘Does an L1

Spanish speaker, who is highly proficient in L2 English, show more signs of vowel reduction in L1 Spanish than Spanish monolinguals?’. Based on earlier studies on L1 vowel production by Spanish speakers (Cervera et al., 2001; Chládková et al., 2011; Delattre, 1969; Marín

Gálvez, 1995; Martínez Celdrán, 1995; Monroy-Casas, 2005), we expect that an L1 speaker of Spanish will indeed show vowel reduction in L1 Spanish, both in vowel quality and duration. We hypothesize that the vowel reduction in this case subject’s L1 Spanish will occur to a greater extent than it does in the speech of Spanish monolinguals, with regard to both vowel duration as well as vowel quality. Important to note is the fact that we cannot, in this case, speak of ‘L1 attrition’ in the sense of actual decay or loss of this subject’s L1, as there is no longitudinal data to compare the current recordings to. Therefore, the term ‘attrition’ will be used to merely indicate the differences that are found between the subject’s speech and that of L1 monolingual Spanish speakers, as recorded in earlier research.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Method

Case Subject

To answer the research question, speech of an L1 Spanish speaker who has become highly proficient in L2 English during adulthood is analyzed. Nowadays, there is a convenient source of such speech samples available: celebrities who have moved from their native

Spanish speaking country to an English-speaking country like the United States or the United

Kingdom. For the current study, the speech of Colombian actress Sofía Vergara is analyzed.

Vergara was born in Barranquilla, Colombia, in 1972. She was raised with Colombian

Spanish as her L1 and attended a private elementary school in Barranquilla that mentions it currently ‘works to ensure that the graduates become (…) trilingual’ and teaches part of its curriculum in English (Colegio Marymount Barranquilla, n.d.). However, the specifics of the education that Vergara has received during her attendance, other than a partial instruction in

English, is unclear. Her early career as a model and presenter was limited to Latin American media and her career aimed at the English-speaking market did not start until 1994, when she moved from Colombia to the United States. Despite having received bilingual education during elementary school and living in the United States for approximately twenty years,

Vergara is known for her thick Colombian accent when speaking English and describes the accent as something she ‘can’t get rid of’ (Baral, 2014; Brown, 2014). However, in this case study, her L1 Colombian Spanish speech is being analyzed. Since Colombian Spanish is a variety of Standard Spanish, some linguistic specifics with regard to the current research topic will first be given to support the choice for this variety.

L1 Colombian Spanish Varieties

According to Canfield (1981), Colombia knows several varieties of Spanish that show some notable differences when compared to each other. These differences are usually geography-based: most varieties share similarities with the Spanish language that is spoken in

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS adjacent countries. For example, a Colombian Spanish variety called Nariño, spoken in the southwest of Colombia, is similar to that of (neighboring) Ecuadorian Spanish. One of the similarities between the latter varieties is marked vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, which distinguishes it from Standard Spanish. This would, in the case of the current study, make it unfit for a comparison with Standard Spanish, which does not show vowel reduction to the same extent.

However, Vergara’s hometown Barranquilla is located in the far north of Colombia and its regional dialect, ‘español barranquillero’, is a part of what is called ‘español costeño colombiano’, or Coastal Colombian Spanish: a collection of dialects spoken along the

Caribbean coast region of northern Colombia. In contrast to varieties spoken elsewhere in

Colombia, Coastal Colombian Spanish varieties identify themselves with the Caribbean. They are phonologically the most related to Andalusian Spanish and normally do not show vowel reduction (Garrido, 2007). Therefore, Coastal Colombian Spanish is judged to be sufficiently similar to Standard Spanish (as well as sufficiently different from other Colombian Spanish varieties) to be investigated in this paper, especially with respect to vowel reduction as the main topic of this study.

Speech by Vergara, taken from an interview and a commercial, is used for analysis.

Clearly articulated and non-lengthened vowels are extracted and measured for their duration and vowel quality. The collected data is consequently compared to Spanish vowel durations, produced by L1 Spanish speakers, as measured by Chládková et al. (2011), Marín Gálvez

(1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005), as well as Spanish vowel formants produced by L1 Spanish speakers as measured by Cervera et al. (2001), Chládková et al. (2011); Delattre (1969) and

Martínez Celdrán (1995). The goal of these comparisons is to indicate whether approximately two decades of working and living in the United States has caused Vergara to reduce her unstressed vowels in her L1 to a larger extent than L1 speakers of Spanish.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Materials

To enable a semi-automatic acoustical analysis, the audio quality of the research material had to be relatively high: not only did the speech rate have to be reasonable (i.e., not too fast for the software to process), but any background noise was undesirable as well. While a recording in a controlled, experimental setting would be ideal, a spontaneous recording was preferable to account for natural, uninfluenced L1 speech. Two interviews with Vergara were chosen: a short Spanish commercial interview from 2012 (lasting 1 minute and 15 seconds), and a television interview from 2015 (lasting 4 minutes and 22 seconds), resulting in a total of

5 minutes and 37 seconds of audio. By using relatively recent interviews, it would capture her

L1 Colombian Spanish speech after approximately two decades of living and working in the

US and having shifted to a daily use of her L2 American English. The audio was taken from two YouTube clips with corresponding subtitles (COVERGIRL, 2012; Univision, 2015), which were checked for correctness (e.g., adding repetitions, hesitations and other filled pauses) in order to create a full verbatim transcript.

Prosodic Analysis

The transcripts were aligned with the audio files in Praat (Boersma & Weenink, 2017) in an orthographic tier. This tier contained the whole words from the transcript, without punctuation and not yet divided into syllables or phonemes. The orthographic tier was subsequently manually divided into chunks of approximately three seconds of speech to facilitate analysis. Using the aligned audio and chunks of text in the first tier, the phonetic alignment tool EasyAlign (Goldman, 2011) was used to create four extra tiers. Figure 2 illustrates this using the utterance Bueno, me encanta ser de chica Covergirl porque (‘Well, I love being a Covergirl because…’) produced by Vergara. Above the orthographic tier, a phonemic tier was created, maintaining the boundaries of the manually created chunks of speech but transforming the orthographic transcription to a phonemic transcription (e.g.,

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS bueno into /bwéno/, which appears as bw'e-no). Next, a ‘words’ tier maintained the orthographic transcription but divided this into different words, above which a ‘syllable’ tier subsequently divided the phonemic transcription into different syllables (e.g., /bwéno/ into

/bwé/ and /no/). Finally, a ‘phones’ tier distinguished the individual phonemes within the phonemic ‘syllable’ tier and automatically created separate boundaries for each phoneme

(e.g., /b/, /w/, /e/, /n/ and /o/). Any brief moments of silence that were left (e.g., someone drawing breath leading up to an utterance, or short silences between two utterances) were automatically marked with an underscore by EasyAlign, and could later be filtered out of the resulting data file.

Figure 2. Waveform, spectrogram, F0 contour and orthographic and phonemic tiers created in

Praat for the utterance Bueno, me encanta de ser chica Covergirl porque produced by

Vergara. The word Covergirl was automatically segmented but later removed from the analysis.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Since a full verbatim transcript was used, speech that was considered unusable was initially incorporated and automatically segmented by EasyAlign, but later removed from the analysis. This included any form of non-lexical utterances (see also Ward, 2004) like stammering (e.g., ‘eh’, a lengthened ‘y’) and back-channeling (e.g., ‘hm’, ‘uh-hm’), as well as repetition while looking for words (e.g., ‘yo no, yo no, yo no sentía…’). Also, instances during which the voice of the interviewer could be heard (either isolated or talking over Vergara) was not incorporated, as well as English words (e.g., ‘Covergirl’, ‘Internet’, ‘Modern Family’), since these vowels could have been purposely articulated accordant with the L2 English norm instead of the L1 Spanish.

Approximately four seconds from the first recording contained the voice of an interviewer and were thus deleted; the rest of the audio consisted of continuous speech from

Vergara at a calm pace which was all suitable for analysis. The second recording contained more spontaneous turn-taking and thus more data that was considered unusable: approximately 68 seconds of speech contained the voice of the interviewer and 14 seconds of speech consisted of unusable speech by Vergara (e.g., laughter, stammering, repeated words).

From the two audio files, a total of 2 minutes and 4 seconds (including short pauses between sentences, intros, outros and unusable speech) was deemed unusable for analysis and was thus not incorporated in the analysis. This resulted in a total of 3 minutes and 33 seconds of speech being used for analysis.

The automatic alignment of the audio with the words was checked manually to make sure the beginning and ending of words matched roughly with the speech. These boundaries were determined by a visual inspection of acoustic cues, such as an increased wave amplitude at the beginning and ending of a word, and the presence of pitch for words beginning or ending with a voiced phoneme. At this point, labels for adjacent overlapping vowels that were no longer recognizable as two distinct vowels (e.g., para hacer was transcribed as p-a-r-a-c-e-

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS r), as well as diphthongs and consonants were cleared. This resulted in the relevant data set for the current study, which consequently only contained clearly articulated, non-lengthened vowels (N = 1.206).

The remaining vowels were then examined for a correct setting of left and right boundaries. The boundaries were manually checked on boundary placement and altered if needed, by checking for a presence of pitch and a change of formant structure in the spectrogram. This is also visible in Figure 2: the automatically established right boundary of the word ‘bueno’ in the third and fourth tier and the right boundary of the vowel /o/ in the sixth tier do not match: a manual analysis of pitch presence and formant structure showed that the /o/ ended slightly earlier than the final boundary that was automatically set by EasyAlign.

Next, the ‘phones’ tier was duplicated into two new tiers and the vowels were manually coded as either being stressed or unstressed, as can be seen in Figure 3. For this, standard rules concerning stress placement in Spanish were applied (see Eddington, 2004): words ending in a consonant other than –n or –s are stressed on the final syllable; words ending in –n, –s or a vowel are stressed on the penultimate syllable. Exceptions to these rules are syllables that contain a written accent, which reflects the prominence within the word

(e.g., ‘maquillándose’ receives stress on the third syllable /llán/ and not the penultimate syllable, even though it ends in a vowel). The two tiers, containing either stressed or unstressed vowels, could now be used to extract vowel duration and formant frequencies.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Figure 3. Waveform, spectrogram, F0 contour and orthographic and phonemic tiers, including tiers for stressed and unstressed vowels, created in Praat for the utterance Bueno, me encanta de ser chica Covergirl porque.

Vowel duration in milliseconds was automatically extracted using a Praat script by

Lennes (2002). A second script by Lennes (2003) checked each vowel for its three formant frequencies F1, F2 and F3. Since earlier research has shown that all five Spanish vowels can be sufficiently distinguished by the first and second formant alone (Delattre, 1969; Martínez

Celdrán, 1995), the third formant (F3) will not be included in the analysis. Both scripts only checked for labeled (i.e., non-empty) segments within the tiers containing the stressed and unstressed vowels. As mentioned earlier, underscores representing respiratory noise or short silences could be manually filtered out of the data set, leaving only the duration and formant frequencies of stressed and unstressed vowels. These two types of data were combined into

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS one data set. Table 3 presents an overview of the 1.206 vowels that were included in the analysis.

Table 3

Distribution of the five Spanish vowels found in the recordings, categorized by stress

/a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ Total

Stressed 158 217 104 120 46 645

Unstressed 162 149 54 173 23 561

Total 320 366 158 293 69 1.206

Results

In the following sections, the results for measured vowel duration and vowel quality will be discussed. First, the measured duration for stressed and unstressed vowels will be separately compared to stressed and unstressed vowels measurements from earlier studies.

Next, the measurements for stressed and unstressed vowel durations will be combined to assess a relative degree of durational vowel reduction. This degree of durational reduction will, where possible, be compared to the degree of reduction in earlier studies. Lastly, the differences in duration between stressed and unstressed vowels measured in this study will be statistically compared with each other. Next, the results for qualitative reduction will be approached similarly: the formant frequencies for stressed and unstressed vowels measured in the current study will be compared to earlier studies, before assessing a relative degree of qualitative vowel reduction as well as statistically comparing the F1 and F2 movements between stressed and unstressed vowels in the current study with each other. Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations for vowel duration (in milliseconds) and the first and

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

second formant frequencies (in Hz), separated by stress, produced by Vergara in her L1

Spanish.

Table 4

Means (and standard deviations) for formant frequencies in Hz and duration in milliseconds

for all stressed/unstressed vowels

Parameter /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/

M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD)

Stressed F1 845 (115) 603 (74) 496 (92) 631 (89) 564 (172)

F2 1733 (152) 2095 (283) 2322 (436) 1302 (271) 1475 (487)

Duration 99.61 (54.13) 76.41 (46.12) 94.44 (54.54) 80.91 (42.52) 77.75 (34.45)

Unstressed F1 753 (105) 577 (78) 496 (70) 628 (87) 569 (152)

F2 1801 (193) 2116 (191) 2354 (302) 1349 (274) 1466 (472)

Duration 72.35 (30.24) 66.27 (35.25) 63.34 (41.45) 67.79 (26.82) 65.58 (23.81)

Vowel Duration

To determine a significant difference between the duration of stressed and unstressed

vowels in this study, the data were tested for normality. Review of the Shapiro-Wilk test for

normality (see Table A in the Appendix for an elaborate listing of the statistical results)

suggested that normality could not be assumed for the durations of all stressed vowels, and

unstressed /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/. The results for unstressed /u/ (SW = .943, df = 23, p = .213) did

suggest a normal distribution of the duration measurements. However, since this would only

account for a partially normal distribution, a Mann-Whitney U test was conducted to

investigate the duration differences between all vowels in stressed versus unstressed position.

This test indicated that the duration in unstressed position was significantly shorter than in

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS stressed position for /a/ (U = 9072, p = .000), /i/ (U = 1686.5, p = .000) and /o/ (U = 8783, p =

.025). There was no significant difference in duration between the unstressed and stressed /e/

(U = 14384, p = .073) and /u/ (U = 431.5, p = .215).

Stressed vowel duration in earlier studies. Figure 4 and Table 5 show the results from a one sample t-test comparing the found means of stressed vowel durations in milliseconds from this data set and the data by Marín Gálvez (1995), Chládková et al. (2011) and Monroy-Casas (2005). Both the mean duration of the stressed /a/ (M = 99.61, SD = 54.13) and stressed /i/ (M = 94.44, SD = 54.54) were significantly longer than those measured in all three earlier studies. The mean durations of the stressed /e/ (M = 76.41, SD = 46.12) and stressed /u/ (M = 77.75, SD = 34.45) did not differ significantly from the mean durations in earlier data. The stressed /o/ (M = 80.91, SD = 42.52) was only significantly different from the data from Marín Gálvez (1995), (M = 69.35), t(119) = 2.98, p < .01, but not those from

Chládková et al. (2011) and Monroy-Casas (2005). A more elaborate listing of the statistical results can be found in Table C in the Appendix.

Table 5

Resulting p-values of comparisons between the durations in milliseconds of stressed vowels

Comparison study /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/

Marín Gálvez (1995) p < .001 p = .076 p < .001 p = .004 p = .075

Chládková et al. (2011) p = .001 p = .895 p < .001 p = .208 p = .134

Monroy-Casas (2005) p = .002 p = .985 p = .007 p = .058 p = .055

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

160

140

120

100 ** ** 80 *** ** *** *** ** 60

Mean Vowel Duration (ms) Duration Vowel Mean /a/ stressed /e/ stressed /i/ stressed /o/ stressed /u/ stressed Current study Marín Gálvez (1995) Chládková et al. (2011) Monroy-Casas (2004)

Figure 4. Mean vowel durations (in milliseconds) for the five stressed Spanish vowels as measured in the current study and earlier research. Error bars denote standard deviations.

Significant differences compared to the relevant vowel measured in the current study are indicated by * (p < .05), ** (p < .01) or *** (p < .001).

Unstressed vowel duration in earlier studies. Figure 4 and Table 6 show the results from a one sample t-test comparing the found means of unstressed vowel durations in milliseconds from this data set and the data from earlier research. Only data found by Marín

Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005) will be used for comparison, since only these two studies have specifically reported duration means for unstressed vowels separately from stressed vowel durations. Similar to its stressed counterpart, the unstressed /a/ (M = 72.35, SD

= 30.24) had the highest mean of all unstressed vowels in the current study. Moreover, the mean duration of the unstressed /a/ was significantly higher than those in earlier research data, as were the means of the unstressed /e/ (M = 66.27, SD = 35.25), unstressed /o/ (M = 67.79,

SD = 26.82) and the unstressed /u/ (M = 65.58, SD = 23.81). The unstressed /i/ (M = 63.34,

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

SD = 41.45) was the only vowel for which the mean did not differ significantly from those measured by Marín Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005). A more elaborate listing of the statistical results can be found in Table D in the Appendix.

Table 6

Resulting p-values of comparisons between the durations in milliseconds of unstressed vowels

Comparison /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/

Marín Gálvez (1995) p < .001 p = .011 p = .282 p < .001 p = .025

Monroy-Casas (2005) p = .004 p < .001 p = .104 p < .001 p = .003

160 140 120 100 80 ** 60 *** ** *** *** *** * ** 40 20 0

/a/ unstressed /e/ unstressed /i/ unstressed /o/ unstressed /u/ unstressed Mean Vowel Duration (ms) Duration Vowel Mean Current study Marín Gálvez (1995)

Monroy-Casas (2004)

Figure 4. Mean vowel durations (in milliseconds) for the five unstressed Spanish vowels as measured in the current study and earlier research. Error bars denote standard deviations.

Significant differences compared to the relevant vowel measured in the current study are indicated by * (p < .05), ** (p < .01) or *** (p < .001).

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Degree of durational reduction. In order to ascertain the degree of vowel reduction within this current study and previous research, the relative size of unstressed vowels in percentages (i.e., the mean duration of an unstressed vowel calculated as a percentage of the mean duration of its stressed counterpart) are presented in Figure 5, and were calculated using the formula in (1).

unstressed duration (1) ∗ 100% stressed duration

Although these individual data points cannot be statistically tested against each other, it puts the measured vowel durations of stressed and unstressed vowels in perspective. These calculations show no clear reduction pattern for the current study. Whereas the relative length of unstressed vowels measured by Marín Gálvez (1995) is consistently higher than those measured by Monroy-Casas (2005), the current study does not show such consistency. The /e/ and /u/ seem to be less reduced in unstressed position, compared to the other two studies, being respectively 86,7% and 84,4% the size of their counterparts in stressed position. In contrast, the unstressed /a/ and /i/ are relatively more reduced compared to Monroy-Casas

(2005) and Marín Gálvez (1995), being 72,6% and 67,1% the size of the mean stressed /a/ and

/i/, even though these differences are minimal. The relative size of the unstressed /o/ seems to fall between the two other data points.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

100% 86,7 89,3 83,0 83,8 85,0 84,4 79,3 76,1 78,3 80% 72,6 72,7 74,0 71,8 67,1 67,8

60%

40%

20%

0% Unstressed vowel vowel (%) length Unstressed /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ Current study Marín Gálvez (1995) Monroy-Casas (2004)

Figure 5. Mean duration of the measured Spanish unstressed vowels measured calculated as a percentage of the mean duration of their stressed counterparts.

The relative durations of the /a/ and /i/ vowels in unstressed position vis-à-vis stressed position show a greater size of durational reduction compared to the studies by Marín Gálvez

(1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005). Both vowels were significantly longer in duration compared to those in these studies and Chládková et al. (2011) as well. The /e/ and /u/ show a different pattern. Both were, in stressed position, significantly similar in duration compared to those measured by Marín Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005), yet significantly longer in duration in unstressed position compared to these studies and Chládková et al. (2001). This resulted in both /e/ and /u/ having a relatively longer duration in unstressed position compared to the other studies, and thus indicating less reduction.

Vowel Quality

The measurements of F1 and F2 were tested for normality before determining a significant difference between the vowel formants in stressed and unstressed vowels (see

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Table B in the Appendix for all statistical results). The only formant for which the data could be assumed normally distributed in both stress positions was the F1 of /e/. For all other formant data, normality could not be assumed in one or both stress positions. To account for a consistent statistical approach and interpretation, a Mann-Whitney U test was conducted to investigate the F1 and F2 differences between all vowels in stressed versus unstressed position. For the /a/, the test indicated that there is a significant rise in both F1 (U = 6368, p =

.000) and F2 (U = 9822.5, p = .000) between the unstressed and stressed position. The /e/ showed a significant fall in F1 from stressed to unstressed (U = 12960, p = .001) and a small yet non-significant rise in F2 (U = 15980, p = .851). For the /i/, the movement of both F1 (U =

2708.5, p = .715) and F2 (U = 2795, p = .963) was not significant. The same applied for the

/o/, with a non-significant movement of F1 (U = 9695, p = .337) and F2 (U = 9286, p = .125), and the /u/ for which F1 (U = 516, p = .869) and F2 (U = 527, p = .980) measurements did not differ significantly going from stressed to unstressed position.

Stressed vowel quality in earlier studies. All studies used for comparison with regard to vowel quality (i.e., Cervera et al., 2001; Chládková et al., 2011; Delattre, 1969;

Martínez Celdrán, 1995) have reported vowel formants for stressed vowels, with only Delattre

(1969) specifically reporting unstressed vowel formants as well. Thus, any significant differences between stressed vowel formants (in Hz) measured in the current study will be first compared to those found in earlier research. This will not necessarily help predicting any reduction of unstressed vowels, but it will give an insight in the participant differences among the different measurements in these studies.

One sample t-tests were performed to examine the difference between each stressed vowel’s first and second formant frequency from this current study and Cervera et al. (2001),

Chládková et al. (2011), Delattre (1969) and Martínez Celdrán (1995). A complete listing of the statistical results can be found in Tables E to H in the Appendix. The results show that all

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS formant frequencies of stressed vowels from the current study differ significantly (p < .001) from the frequencies found in the earlier studies, with three exceptions: the F2 of the stressed

/i/ (M = 2322, SD = 436) did not differ significantly from the F2 measured by Delattre (1969)

(M = 2250); t(103) = 1.96, p = .094), and Cervera et al. (2001) (M = 2241); t(103) = 1.90, p =

.060. Also, the F2 of the stressed /a/ (M = 1733, SD = 152) did not differ significantly from the F2 measured by Martínez Celdrán (1995) (M = 1712), t(157) = 1.73, p = .086. Figure 6 shows a formant chart of the formant frequencies for stressed vowels from the four earlier studies and from the current study. The expected pattern of an inverted triangle (see Delattre,

1969) is only partially visible by the position of the stressed vowels /i/, /e/, /a/ and /o/ from the current study. The stressed /u/ shows the greatest digression from this pattern, showing more similarities with the stressed /o/.

F2 (Hz) 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 250

/i/ /u/ 350

450 /i/ /e/ /o/ 550 /u/ F1 (Hz) /e/ /o/ 650

750

/a/ /a/ 850

Current study Delattre (1969) Cervera et al. (2001) Martínez Celdrán (1995)

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Figure 6. Formant chart containing the five Spanish vowels in stressed position, presented with their mean F1 and F2 frequencies (in Hz), measured in the current study and earlier studies.

Unstressed vowel quality in earlier studies. As mentioned before, Delattre (1969) is the only comparison study to specifically report formant frequencies for unstressed vowels, aside from stressed vowels. One sample t-tests were performed to examine the difference between each unstressed vowel’s first and second formant frequency from this current study and Delattre (1969). A complete listing of the statistical results can be found in Table I in the

Appendix. The results show that all first and second formant frequencies from unstressed

Spanish vowels measured in the current study differ significantly from the F1 and F2 of unstressed Spanish vowels measured by Delattre (1969) (all differences showing a p-value of p < .001). The dissimilarity between Spanish vowels in unstressed position measured in the current study and in Delattre (1969) is visible in Figure 7. Again, the unstressed /i/, /e/, /a/ and

/o/ appear in the form of an inverted triangle, with the /u/ digressing. Moreover, all unstressed vowels seem to be produced with a lower F1 and a higher F2, compared to those in Delattre

(1969).

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

F2 (Hz) 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 250 /i/ /u/ 350

450 /e/ /o/ /i/ 550 /e/ /u/ F1 (Hz) /o/ /a/ 650

/a/ 750

850

Current study Delattre (1969)

Figure 7. The five Spanish vowels in unstressed position, presented with their mean F1 and

F2 frequencies (in Hz), measured in the current study and by Delattre (1969).

Degree of qualitative reduction. To account for the significant differences between the formants of stressed and unstressed vowels found in the current study and Delattre (1969), the modifications of F1 and F2 are analyzed in terms of percentage differences between the formant frequencies of stressed vowels and those of unstressed vowels. These calculations are visible in Table 8 and Figure 8. The similarities in these results are scarce. A few movements are sporadically similar, such as the relatively large decline in F1 for the unstressed /a/ and unstressed /e/. Moreover, no change in F1 for the unstressed /i/, and a small rise of F2 for the unstressed /o/ are visible in the current study, which matches the findings of Delattre (1969).

Table 8

Percentage differences of F1 and F2 between stressed and unstressed Spanish vowels as measured in the current study and in Delattre (1969)

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

/a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/

Current study F1 -10,87% - 4,37% 0,00% - 0,49% + 0,97%

F2 + 3,90% + 1,03% + 1,38% + 3,65% - 0,59 %

Delattre (1969) F1 -13,33% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00% 0,00%

F2 -3,57% -7,69% -2,22% +5,26% 0,00%

To better present the movements of formant frequencies from stressed to unstressed position, the formant frequencies of stressed and unstressed vowels, taken from Delattre

(1969) and the current study are presented in Figure 9 and 10. In Figure 9, it is visible that the high vowels /i/ and /u/ in Delattre (1969) show little to no movement, whereas the unstressed

/e/ and /o/ are slightly centered (towards a schwa vowel but not quite reaching it). Finally, the unstressed /a/ is reduced the most, albeit to a small extent.

F2 (Hz) 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 250 /i//i/ /u/ 350

450 /e/ /e/ /o//o/

550 F1 (Hz)

/a/ 650

/a/ 750

850

Stressed Unstressed

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Figure 9. A comparison of F1 and F2 movement (in Hz) of the five Spanish vowels in stressed and unstressed position, created using data measured in Delattre (1969).

In the current study, as shown in Figure 10, the high vowels /i/ and /u/ show a similar

(i.e., barely any) movement from stressed to unstressed position. The /e/ and /o/ show a small movement, but not towards the center like those in Delattre (1969): the unstressed /e/ shows a small fall in F1, whereas the /o/ shows a slight rise in F2. The unstressed /a/ shows a similar movement compared to the unstressed /a/ in Delattre (1969), except there is an increase instead of decline in F2.

F2 (Hz) 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 250

350

450 /i//i/ 550 /e/ /u//u/ F1 (Hz) /e/ /o//o/ 650

/a/ 750

/a/ 850

Stressed Unstressed

Figure 10. A comparison of F1 and F2 movement (in Hz) of the five Spanish vowels in stressed and unstressed position, created using data measured in the current study.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Discussion

The current case study investigated prosodic L1 attrition in the speech of a Spanish-

English bilingual. Specifically, this study was aimed at investigating the occurrence of vowel reduction in the L1 speech of Sofía Vergara, an L1 speaker of Colombian Spanish who has been living and working in the United States (an L2 English environment) for approximately two decades. Vowel reduction was determined by analyzing two properties of vowels in unstressed position vis-à-vis stressed position: the duration in milliseconds and the movement of the first and second formants. The main research question was whether Vergara would show vowel reduction, a prosodic phenomenon that is employed to a great extent in English and barely in Spanish (Delattre, 1969), in her L1. It was hypothesized that vowel reduction would occur in her L1 speech, both durational and qualitatively, and that this would occur to a greater extent than the L1 Spanish norm as a result of living and working in an L2 environment for approximately two decades. This norm for comparison was established by using measurements from L1 speech by Spanish monolinguals reported in prior research.

In general, vowel reduction did occur in the L1 speech of Vergara. However, this occurrence did not show a consistent pattern among the two dimensions that were under investigation: vowel duration and quality. Moreover, among these two dimensions, no vowels were reduced to a greater extent than the established L1 norm. In the following sections, the results of durational and qualitative reduction will be interpreted independently, after which several explanations will be discussed for the degree of vowel reduction in general.

Durational Reduction

According to the first hypothesis, durational vowel reduction would occur to a greater extent than the Spanish L1 norm. The results in the current study do not support the first hypothesis. The results show that a significant reduction of vowel duration occurred in the speech of Vergara for the unstressed /a/, /i/ and /o/. The expectation that durational reduction

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS would occur is thus partially met. This is unlike the results from earlier studies investigating durations for both stressed and unstressed vowels in the L1 of monolingual Spanish speakers

(i.e., Marín Gálvez, 1995; Monroy-Casas, 2005). In these studies, a small yet significant durational reduction was reported for all five Spanish vowels in the unstressed position compared to the stressed position. Although the actual reduction in milliseconds as measured in this study cannot directly be compared to the reduction in earlier studies, it is possible to compare the relative degree of durational reduction in the current study with that in Marín

Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005). However, this did not result in a clear pattern between the three studies. The relative durational reduction measured in Marin Gálvez (1995) was consistently higher than that in Monroy-Casas (2005), but the degree of durational reduction measured in the current study show no such consistency when placed alongside the other studies.

The /a/ and /i/ showed a significant reduction of duration in the current study, as well as a higher relative durational reduction compared to Marín Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas

(2005), which suggests that they are ‘further’ reduced than the Spanish norm. Even though the

/o/ also proved to have been significantly reduced in the current study, its relative degree of durational reduction was only greater than that of Marín Gálvez (1995). Therefore, the results in the current study do not support the first hypothesis (i.e., durational vowel reduction will occur to a greater extent than the Spanish L1 norm).

It is important to take into account the overall differences between the vowels in the current study and those from earlier research. When separately comparing the duration of stressed and unstressed vowels from this study with those from earlier studies by Marin

Gálvez (1995), Chládkova et al. (2011) and Monroy-Casas (2005), it becomes clear that the subject of this case study differed from the Spanish L1 norm with regard to the duration of some of her vowels. The durations of the stressed /a/ and /i/ were significantly longer than

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS those of the three comparison studies; the stressed /o/ was only significantly longer in duration than those from Marín Gálvez (1995). The stressed /e/ and /u/ showed to be not significantly different from L1 monolinguals, whereas in unstressed position, they are produced with a significantly longer duration than those of the monolinguals speakers. This resulted in Vergara’s /e/ and /u/ showing the lowest relative reduction compared to the other studies. Moreover, as already mentioned, these two vowels were the only vowels not showing a significant difference between their duration in stressed and unstressed position. In contrast,

Vergara’s /a/ and /i/ were produced with a significantly longer duration in both stressed and unstressed position than those of the L1 monolingual speakers of Spanish from all three earlier studies, and showed the highest relative reduction. Moreover, the difference between the duration of unstressed /a/ and /i/ and their stressed counterparts was shown to be significant. The duration of the unstressed /o/ was also significantly reduced, even though its relative degree of durational reduction fell between that of Marín Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-

Casas (2005). We will return to the inconsistencies among the measurements from the current study and earlier studies after discussing the results regarding qualitative reduction.

Qualitative Reduction

According to the second hypothesis, a greater qualitative vowel reduction was expected compared to the Spanish L1 norm. The results show no support for this hypothesis.

Only the /a/ and /e/ showed significant differences in formants between stressed and unstressed formants. The unstressed /i/, /o/ and /u/ did not significantly differ from their stressed position. The unstressed /a/ showed a significant fall in F1 and a slight, yet significant, rise in F2. This could be considered a logical movement, since Delattre (1969) mentions that qualitative reduction is most visible in the unstressing of the Spanish /a/, compared to the other four Spanish vowels. This especially expresses itself in the lowering of the F1. The significant change of the /a/ going from stressed to unstressed position, is

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS therefore in line with Delattre (1969). The unstressed /e/ only showed a significant fall in F1, which is not in line with (rather the opposite of) the measurements by Delattre (1969). In that study, the unstressed /e/ is positioned towards a mid-central sound (i.e., only showing a slight fall in F2 and practically no change in F1 compared to the stressed position). The unstressed

/o/ in the current study is positioned towards a centralized vowel, albeit not significantly.

Unstressed, the high vowels /i/ and /u/ do not take the positions that were expected based on

Delattre (1969). The unstressed /i/ is realized with a rise in F2, whereas the unstressed /u/ shows a lower F2 compared to their stressed counterparts, but these differences were not significant. Since only the /a/ and /e/ vowels show significant reduction in quality, yet not to a greater extent than the /a/ and /e/ in Delattre (1969), these results show no support for the second hypothesis (i.e., a greater qualitative vowel reduction occurs compared to the Spanish

L1 norm).

Similar to the durational measurements, it is necessary to briefly reflect on the dissimilarities between vowel formants measured in this study and in earlier research. Overall, the stressed vowels produced by Vergara already show differences with those produced by

Spanish monolinguals in earlier studies. With the exception of three formant frequencies, all stressed vowels were produced with significantly different formant frequencies than those produced by the speakers in Delattre (1969), Cervera et al. (2001), Martínez Celdrán (1995) and Chládková et al. (2011). When visually presented together (see Figure 6), the location of stressed vowels based on their mean formants resemble an inverted triangle shape when connected to each other as seen in earlier studies, albeit with a smaller range in frequency.

That is, if we establish a range based on the measurements from earlier studies, almost all measured formants of stressed vowels fall between the lowest and highest F2, but show a consistently higher mean F1. The /u/, both stressed and unstressed, is an exception to this. Its

F1 lies closer to the /e/ or /o/ whereas, being a high vowel, it is expected to be in line with the

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

/i/ (based on Delattre, 1969). In general, the five stressed vowels as reported in the other studies are more dispersed, whereas the vowels by Vergara are located closer together on the chart. The formants of unstressed vowels also collectively showed significant differences compared to the unstressed vowels measured by Delattre (1969). However, the inverted triangle shape persists. In the following section, we will reflect on the occurrence of vowel reduction in general and provide possible explanations for these results.

Vowel Reduction in General

When we look at the occurrence of vowel reduction in general, it becomes clear that the two dimensions show little overlap: only the unstressed /a/ was produced with a significantly reduced duration and quality, which remained in line with the Spanish L1 norm.

In the formant analysis by Delattre (1969), we have seen that the Spanish /a/ shows the most reduction in unstressed position compared to stressed position. The two studies on durational reduction show different results: Marin Gálvez (1996) reports the /u/ as the vowel with the greatest reduction, and for Monroy-Casas (2004), this holds for the /i/. With these earlier studies in mind, it is difficult to explain why the /a/ has been the most susceptible to reduction compared to the other vowels. However, there could be several explanations for the fact that

Vergara does not seem to show L1 prosody attrition.

One factor that might explain this is her onset age of L2 acquisition. In this specific case, two perspectives can be taken. On the one hand, Vergara could be considered a late bilingual. Despite having received some form of bilingual elementary education, a dominant use of L2 English effectively began at the age of 18. The observation that L1 attrition does not seem to occur is therefore in line with results of studies on late bilinguals. De Leeuw et al.

(2012) report bilinguals with a relatively late age of onset who showed less influence of L2 norms in their L1 speech (thus showing less L1 attrition) than early bilinguals. Since Vergara started living and working in an L2 environment as an adult, this could account for the

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS relatively small extent of vowel reduction in her L1 speech, which is closer to the Spanish L1 norm.

One the other hand, Vergara could be considered an early bilingual. Even though it is not clear how her bilingual education specifically took shape, it is evident that she came in contact with L2 English at a relatively early age. With this perspective in mind, the lack of vowel reduction in her L1 speech corresponds with the results of studies on early bilinguals, who tend to magnify the differences between similar sounding phonemes from the L1 and L2

(Guion, 2003). By overcompensating in their production of L1 phonemes, they try to avoid producing L2 phonemes in their L1. The comparison between Vergara’s vowels and those of

L1 Spanish monolinguals (in Figure 6), show large differences. This might indicate an overcompensation in her L1 regarding phoneme production, which might be why the production of stressed versus unstressed vowels occurs according to the L1 norm as well.

It is possible that the need to overcompensate when speaking in the L1, as stated above, serves a communicative function. Earlier research has shown that L1 prosody attrition has consequences concerning the perception by L1 listeners. Durational prosodic properties, specifically, can influence the intelligibility or the degree of a foreign accented as perceived by L1 listeners. When L1 utterances contain L2 durational patterns or L2 phonemes, they are perceived as less intelligible by L1 listeners (Boula de Mareüil & Vieru-Dimulescu, 2006;

Quené & Van Delft, 2010; Tajima et al., 1997). It is therefore possible that Vergara might be overcompensating by only slightly reducing her vowels or not at all, with the goal to remain intelligible to the listener—especially since both interviews are targeted to a L1 Spanish- speaking audience. Employing an English-like degree of vowel reduction could also cause her speech to sound foreign, which she could find inappropriate.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Limitations and Strengths

There are some limitations in this study that should be taken into account. In total,

1.206 vowels were analyzed and sorted. There was an inequality among the total amounts of different vowels (e.g., the /e/ was measured 366 times; the /u/ 69 times) and there were large differences between the ratios of the amount of stressed versus unstressed vowels (e.g., 158 to

162 for /a/ and 104 to 54 for /i/, respectively). Because recordings of natural, spontaneous speech were used for analysis, the number of vowels completely depended on the conversation. Future studies on vowel reduction could, for example, prepare sentences containing target words and record them in a controlled setting, like some studies already do

(e.g., Chládková et al., 2011). Even though this is a compromise on spontaneity (since sentences are dictated from a list), the resulting speech would be more natural than, for example, recording isolated words out of context.

Moreover, the studies that were used for comparison with regard to vowel duration

(Chládková et al., 2011; Marín Gálvez, 1995; Monroy-Casas, 2005) and quality (Cervera et al., 2001; Chládková et al., 2011; Delattre, 1969; Martínez Celdrán, 1995) showed various dissimilarities, which complicated their purpose of establishing an L1 Spanish norm. First of all, it is important to keep in mind that the current study concerns a case study, which obviously complicates the comparison between these results and those from other work.

Moreover, the comparison studies have also used a small number of participants, which does not make them ideal for comparison, also because their participants were male (N=5 for

Delattre, 1969; N=10 for Cervera et al., 2001), as well as female (N=2 for Marín Gálvez,

1995; N=5 for Martínez Celdrán, 1995; N=10 for Chládková et al., 2011), or a mix of men and women (respectively N=3 and N=2 for Monroy-Casas, 2005). The two studies reporting vowel formants for men and women separately both report consistently higher F1 and F2 values for female voices compared to male voices (Chládková et al., 2011; Martínez Celdrán,

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

1995). Since the other comparison studies on vowel formants reported data from male participants or mean values for male and female participants, this might account for some of the differences that were found when comparing these data to those found in the current study.

Also, there are little to no studies measuring the Colombian Spanish vowel system.

Many studies dealing with Colombian Spanish dialects only set out general differences with

Standard Spanish, without actually measuring these differences with regard to different vowel properties such as vowel quality and duration. Moreover, appropriate comparison studies to establish an L1 Standard Spanish norm were difficult to find. A great number of studies seem to be carried out with the same goal: mapping the Spanish vowel system. However, not every study sets the same parameters in doing this. For example, the differences between stressed and unstressed Spanish vowels do not always seem relevant: some studies report means of stressed and unstressed vowels, others make no such distinction. Moreover, some previous studies have distinguished between the different positions of vowels within a word (i.e., a vowel being in word-initial, word-medial or word-final position), but other studies do not. In the current study, no such distinction was made because of two main reasons. Firstly, the studies used for comparison were not consistent in this aspect; comparing vowel properties based on vowel position could thus not have been possible for every study. Secondly, because of the already relatively small number of vowels resulting from the analysis, they were not further divided based on their position within a word.

With regard to the case subject, no recordings were available of her L1 speech prior to moving to the United States. Had this been available, then it could have given an interesting insight in the occurrence of vowel reduction in her L1 without extensive exposure to the L2.

Also, it is unknown whether Vergara reduces unstressed vowels in L2 English. The possibility for L2 learners to fully acquire vowel reduction in the L2 (i.e., on a nativelike level), is a

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS factor that needs to be taken into account. L1 Spanish speakers in the study by Flege and

Bohn (1989) sometimes resembled L1 English speakers with regard to a reduced duration of unstressed syllables, but did not appropriately reduced the quality of vowels in unstressed syllables. It is possible that Vergara simply has not mastered vowel reduction in L2 English as well. She has mentioned herself that even today, her ‘Colombian accent’ remains persistent when speaking English (Baral, 2014; Brown, 2014). If vowel reduction is a prosodic feature that is difficult to acquire for L1 Spanish learners of L2 English, then the chances of transfer occurring from the L2 to the L1 are considerably smaller

The aforementioned limitations do not rule out the theoretical and practical implications of this study. As mentioned earlier, L1 prosody attrition has been underexposed in attrition research so far. The current study adds to that body of research by conducting a case study investigating vowel reduction. In this particular case, the results contradict those of

Flege (1987) and Mora, Keidel and Flege (2015), who state that a prolonged period of immersion in an L2-speaking environment (combined with a dominant use of the L2) generally causes a shift from L1 sounds towards the L2 norm. In future research, a similar study could be carried out on a larger scale (e.g., a longitudinal study using a larger number of

L1 attriters) to further investigate whether this discrepancy still holds. Alternatively, it might also be interesting to further investigate a connection between age of onset and L1 prosody attrition. Rietveld and Van Heuven (2009) briefly mention the fact that prosody is often not taken into account during L2 learning, which is why research on age and L1 prosody attrition could be an interesting addition to research concerning L2 learning. For example, studies could set out to investigate whether early bilinguals show less L1 prosody attrition than late bilinguals, and whether this also results in a bidirectional transfer of prosody. Future studies on the acquisition of L2 prosody (such as vowel reduction) and the subsequent effects on L1

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS prosody could be beneficial to improve L2 learning methods, with the goal to maintain intelligibility and reduce the degree of accentedness in the L1 and L2 speech of bilinguals.

Furthermore, the fact that spontaneous speech was analyzed might be a disadvantage for achieving an equal distribution of different vowels and stress positions, but it does ensure the results to be relevant for vowel reduction in natural speech as it occurs in communication, in contrast to the many controlled experimental settings that have been used in the past. Also, this study adds to the relatively small body of research investigating Colombian Spanish dialects in more detail.

Conclusion

This study was aimed at answering the following research question: ‘Does an L1

Spanish speaker, who is highly proficient in L2 English, show more signs of vowel reduction in L1 Spanish than Spanish monolinguals?’. Measurements of this case subject’s vowels in general compared to speech of Spanish monolinguals in earlier research resulted in more differences than similarities. However, it has been confirmed that vowel reduction occurred in unstressed vowels compared to stressed vowels, both in vowel duration and vowel quality.

Unfortunately, there was no clear pattern of reduction among the two dimensions except for the /a/, which was significantly reduced in both duration and quality. Moreover, in unstressed position the vowels that were produced by the case subject did not seem to be more reduced than those produced by Spanish monolinguals in earlier studies. The investigation of vowel reduction by this bilingual Spanish-English speaker yielded interesting and rather unexpected results. Further research, perhaps longitudinally or on a larger scale, as opposed to this case study, is necessary to further examine this prosodic phenomenon.

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

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Appendix

Table A

Results of a Shapiro-Wilk test of Normality for the durations of stressed and unstressed Spanish vowels

Vowel Stress Duration

/a/ stressed (SW = .882, df = 158, p = .000)

unstressed (SW = .825, df = 162, p = .000)

/e/ stressed (SW = .783, df = 217, p = .000)

unstressed (SW = .747, df = 149, p = .000)

/i/ stressed (SW = .877, df = 104, p = .000)

unstressed (SW = .577, df = 54, p = .000)

/o/ stressed (SW = .892, df = 120, p = .000)

unstressed (SW = .898, df = 173, p = .000)

/u/ stressed (SW = .944, df = 46, p = .028)

unstressed (SW = .943, df = 23, p = .213)

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Table B

Results of a Shapiro-Wilk test of Normality for F1 and F2 scores of stressed and unstressed Spanish vowels

Vowel Stress F1 F2

/a/ stressed (SW = .962, df = 158, p = .000) (SW = .988, df = 158, p = .201)

unstressed (SW = .938, df = 162, p = .000) (SW = .982, df = 162, p = .035)

/e/ stressed (SW = .989, df = 217, p = .092) (SW = .979, df = 217, p = .003)

unstressed (SW = .983, df = 149, p = .055) (SW = .990, df = 149, p = .355)

/i/ stressed (SW = .952, df = 104, p = .001) (SW = .903, df = 104, p = .000)

unstressed (SW = .905, df = 54, p = .000) (SW = .902, df = 54, p = .000)

/o/ stressed (SW = .959, df = 120, p = .001) (SW = .950, df = 120, p = .000)

unstressed (SW = .982, df = 173, p = .025) (SW = .966, df = 173, p = .000)

/u/ stressed (SW = .940, df = 46, p = .020) (SW = .926, df = 46, p = .218)

unstressed (SW = .849, df = 23, p = .003) (SW = .944, df = 23, p = .006)

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Table C

One sample t-test results comparing the durations of stressed vowels (in milliseconds) to those found by Marín Gálvez (1995), Chládková et al. (2011) and Monroy-Casas (2005)

Marín Gálvez (1995) Chládková et al. (2011) Monroy-Casas (2005)

/a/ (M = 77.50), t(157) = 5.14, (M = 85.00), t(157) = 3.39, (M = 85.90), t(157) = 3.19,

p < .001 p = .001 p = .002

/e/ (M = 70.83), t(216) = 1.78, (M = 76.00), t(216) = 0.13, (M = 76.47), t(216) = -0.02,

p = .076 p = .895 p = .985

/i/ (M = 64.04), t(103) = 5.68, (M = 69.00), t(103) = 4.76, (M = 79.68), t(103) = 2.76,

p < .001 p < .001 p = .007

/o/ (M = 69.35), t(119) = 2.98, (M = 76.00), t(119) = 1.27, (M = 73.47), t(119) = 1.92,

p = .004 p = .208 p = .058

/u/ (M = 68.50), t(45) = 1.82, (M = 70.00), t(45) = 1.53, (M = 67.75), t(45) = 1.97,

p = .075 p = .134 p = .055

Table D

One sample t-test results comparing the durations of unstressed vowels (in milliseconds) to those found by Marín Gálvez (1995) and Monroy-Casas (2005)

Marín Gálvez (1995) Monroy-Casas (2005)

/a/ (M = 61.43), t(161) = 4.60, p < .001 (M = 65.40), t(161) = 2.93, p = .004

/e/ (M = 58.82), t(148) = 2.58, p = .011 (M = 55.60), t(148) = 3.69, p < .001

/i/ (M = 57.21), t(53) = 1.09, p = .282 (M = 54.00), t(53) = 1.66, p = .104

/o/ (M = 58.95), t(172) = 4.33, p < .001 (M = 54.40), t(172) = 6.57, p < .001

/u/ (M = 53.61), t(22) = 2.41, p = .025 (M = 48.65), t(22) = 3.41, p = .003

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Table E

One sample t-test results comparing the F1 and F2 (in Hz) of stressed vowels to those found by

Delattre (1969)

F1 F2

/a/ (M = 750), t(157) = 10.39, p < .001 (M = 1400), t(157) = 27.61, p < .001

/e/ (M = 475), t(216) = 25.46, p < .001 (M = 1950), t(216) = 7.52, p <.001

/i/ (M = 300), t(103) = 21.73, p < .001 (M = 2250), t(103) = 1.96, p = .094

/o/ (M = 475), t(119) = 19.24, p < .001 (M = 950), t(119) = 14.23, p < .001

/u/ (M = 300), t(45) = 10.39, p < .001 (M = 800), t(45) = 9.41, p < .001

Table F

One sample t-test results comparing the F1 and F2 (in Hz) of stressed vowels to those found by

Cervera et al. (2001)

F1 F2

/a/ (M = 718), t(157) = 13.89, p < .001 (M = 1479), t(157) = 21.06, p < .001

/e/ (M = 502), t(216) = 20.09, p < .001 (M = 1872), t(216) = 11.58, p <.001

/i/ (M = 331), t(103) = 18.29, p < .001 (M = 2241), t(103) = 1.90, p = .060

/o/ (M = 533), t(119) = 12.10, p < .001 (M = 1156), t(119) = 5.90, p < .001

/u/ (M = 376), t(45) = 7.40, p < .001 (M = 773), t(45) = 9.78, p < .001

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Table G

One sample t-test results comparing the F1 and F2 (in Hz) of stressed vowels to those found by

Martínez Celdrán (1995)

F1 F2

/a/ (M = 886), t(157) = -4.45, p < .001 (M = 1712), t(157) = 1.73, p = .086

/e/ (M = 576), t(216) = 5.37, p < .001 (M = 2367), t(216) = -14.17, p <.001

/i/ (M = 369), t(103) = 14.07, p < .001 (M = 2685), t(103) = -8.49, p < .001

/o/ (M = 586), t(119) = 5.58, p < .001 (M = 1201), t(119) = 4.08, p < .001

/u/ (M = 390), t(45) = 6.85, p < .001 (M = 937), t(45) = 7.50, p < .001

Table H

One sample t-test results comparing the F1 and F2 (in Hz) of stressed vowels to those found by

Chládková et al. (2011)

F1 F2

/a/ (M = 801), t(157) = 4.83, p < .001 (M = 1691), t(157) = 3.47, p = .001

/e/ (M = 531), t(216) = 14.32, p < .001 (M = 2159), t(216) = -5.27, p <.001

/i/ (M = 400), t(103) = 10.62, p < .001 (M = 2560), t(103) = -5.56, p < .001

/o/ (M = 568), t(119) = 7.80, p < .001 (M = 1155), t(119) = 5.94, p < .001

/u/ (M = 431), t(45) = 5.23, p < .001 (M = 921), t(45) = 7.72, p < .001

L1 PROSODY ATTRITION AMONG SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS

Table I

One sample t-test results comparing the F1 and F2 (in Hz) of unstressed vowels to those found by

Delattre (1969)

F1 F2

/a/ (M = 650), t(161) = 12.59, p < .001 (M = 1350), t(161) = 29.67, p < .001

/e/ (M = 475), t(148) = 15.96, p < .001 (M = 1800), t(148) = 20.25, p < .001

/i/ (M = 300), t(53) = 20.65, p < .001 (M = 2200), t(53) = 3.76, p < .001

/o/ (M = 475), t(172) = 23.27, p < .001 (M = 1000), t(172) = 16.78, p < .001

/u/ (M = 300), t(22) = 8.50, p < .001 (M = 800), t(22) = 6.78, p < .001