Marianna Nadeu

L2 effects on the perception and production of a native vowel contrast in early bilinguals

This study investigates the effect of L2 (Spanish) use on Catalan–Spanish bilinguals’ ability to accurately perceive and produce two contrastive native Catalan vowel categories, /e/ and /ε/. Participants were L1 Catalan highly proficient Catalan–Spanish bilinguals differing in amount of daily exposure/use of Catalan (low: 40%–70% vs. high: 80%–100%). Perceptual accuracy was assessed through speeded categorization and AXB discrimination tasks based on a 10-step vowel continuum (/e/–/ε/). Production accuracy was assessed by eliciting /ε/ tokens in Catalan cognate and noncognate words. The results indicated that participants using Spanish more frequently discriminated Catalan vowels /e/ and /ε/ less accurately and significantly more slowly and had a more Spanish-like acoustic target in the production of Catalan /ε/, particularly in cognate words. These results are consistent with the view that, in a language contact context, extensive L2 experience affects L1 sound categories.

Lenition and phonemic overlap in Rome Italian

The purpose of this paper is to offer acoustic evidence for an unusual phonemic contrast in Rome Italian. In our corpus, about half of all tokens of intervocalic /p t k/ are realized with uninterrupted voicing (both word-internally and across word boundaries). Furthermore, the voiced realizations of /t/ and /k/ do not significantly differ from /d/ and /g/ in duration and/or degree of constriction (as acoustically determined). Phonemic contrast is maintained under substantial phonetic overlap. Regarding the labials, duration keeps /p/ and /b/ apart. Contrary to the universal tendency, it is /b/ that is considerably longer, due to complex diachronic facts.

Acoustic Correlates of Emphatic Stress in Central Catalan

A common feature of public speech in Catalan is the placement of prominence on lexically unstressed syllables (“emphatic stress”). This paper presents an acoustic study of radio speech data. Instances of emphatic stress were perceptually identified. Within-word comparison between vowels with emphatic stress and vowels with primary lexical stress reveals that the former are characterized by having a high tone, higher F0 scaling, and greater intensity, but shorter duration with respect to lexically stressed vowels. Emphatic stress can thus be characterized as anchoring an intonational pitch accent on a lexically unstressed syllable. When this phenomenon occurs, primary lexical stress is still cued by duration. Compared with other lexically unstressed vowels, vowels with emphatic stress have greater duration and intensity, and less vowel centralization. Thus, vowels are hyperarticulated when bearing emphatic stress. In particular, schwa is more open, without merging with /a/. Regarding the distribution of emphatic stresses, the most common pattern observed is binary or rhythmic (le̱s instituc i̱o ns ‘the institutions’), with emphatic stress occurring two syllables before the primary stress. Less frequently, emphatic stress appears on the first syllable of the prosodic word (na̱cionalit a ts ‘nationalities’), occasionally producing stress clash (e̱l m a rc ‘the framework’).

Experience effects on the categorization of a native vowel contrast in highly proficient Catalan‐Spanish bilinguals.

The present study investigated the effect of experience on highly proficient adult Catalan‐Spanish bilinguals’ ability to categorize two contrastive native vowel categories, /e/ and /e/. Experience was operationalized as self‐reported amount of use of Catalan on a daily basis. Because Spanish has a single mid front vowel /e/ in the area of the perceptual vowel space of the Catalan mid vowels /e/ and /e/, categorization and discrimination speed and accuracy was hypothesized to vary as a function of amount of use of Catalan and Spanish, more experienced Catalan speakers performing faster and perceiving the contrast more categorically. All participants (N=43) were L1‐Catalan bilinguals, but differed as regards the amount of use of Catalan (N=14, M=62.1, range 40–70 vs N=29, M=91.4, range 80–100). Experience effects were assessed through the categorical perception paradigm: categorization and AXB discrimination tasks based on stimuli drawn from a 10‐step vowel continuum (/e/‐/e/). Response latency data reveal...

A Survey of Phonological Mid Vowel Intuitions in Central Catalan

Catalan, like other Romance languages, has two pairs of phonemic mid vowels (/be/ “well” vs. /bɛ/ “lamb”; /os/ “bear” vs. /ɔs/ “bone”). However, these contrasts do not function like others in the language: they are partially phonologically conditioned, and evidence shows that words may be pronounced with different mid vowels by speakers of the same variety or even by the same speaker. Spanish may influence this instability, as first-language Spanish Catalan-Spanish bilinguals struggle to perceive and produce the contrast. This paper investigates the mid vowel contrasts in an Internet survey of vowel height judgments in 220 words by 146 Central Catalan-speaking individuals who also self-reported their language history. Results confirm that certain phonological contexts condition mid vowel height, typically favoring low mid judgments; where phonological conditioning occurs, speakers judge quality with increased consistency and confidence. Many words lacking phonological conditioning environments, however, are variable across speakers. Bilingualism levels and age have an effect: among Catalan-dominant participants, choice of mid vowel is affected by age, while participants with the highest Catalan dominance have greatest confidence in their intuitions. Variably-judged words are also phonetically variable, indicating a word-specific association between strength of phonological representation and realization.