References

The Latino population in North Carolina has more than doubled in the last decade (U.S. Census Bureau) representing a new linguistic contact situation for new generations of heritage speakers.

Introduction

Research Questions

1.  Which linguistic factors have the greatest effect on the productions of /b d g/ in intervocalic position?

2.  Do heritage speakers of Spanish produce similar patterns to those of immigrants in the realizations of intervocalic /b d g/ in semi-spontaneous speech?

3.  Is there evidence of English influence due to linguistic contact in the productions of heritage Spanish speakers?

The Realization of Intervocalic /bdg/: A Comparative Study of Immigrant and Heritage Speech in N.C.

Caroline Sferruzzo Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA

INTERVOCALIC /BDG/: OCCLUSIVE VS. APPROXIMANT PRONUNCIATIONS -In most monolingual varieties of Spanish: /b/, /d/, /g/ à [β], [ð], [ɣ] in intervocalic position (Hualde, 2005).

HERITAGE SPEAKERS -Early bilinguals who are exposed to a non-English language at an early age but generally do not receive a formal education in the heritage language until years later (Valdés, 2005).

  -Regarding lenition, similar effects were found of Stress and Word Position, but there were no significant differences in production between heritage speakers and recent immigrants overall (Michnowicz et al., 2014).

/BDG/ IN HERITAGE SPEECH IN THE U.S.

   -Impact of speech style: more lenition in spontaneous speech vs. controlled speech; more “native-like” productions for heritage speakers who used Spanish  

Research Methods

Data were collected from fifteen sociolinguistic interviews (avg. 30 min.) with speakers of Mexican origin residing in Raleigh, N.C. at the time of the interviews, and whose native language is Spanish.

Generation Male Female Age Range

Immigrant 8 2 18-52 Heritage 4 1 20-25

Min.Intenisty: Consonant

Max.Intensity: Followingvowel

 = ratio

 

INTENSITY RATIO Intensity ratio measured in PRAAT, adapted from Colantoni & Marinescu (2010).  

Results

Ratio- closer to 1 = more vocalic

/BDG/ OVERALL RESULTS

*/g/ is significantly different from /b/, /d/ (p = 3.1e-08)

*Significant main effect of Stress (p = 1.18e-16)

*No significant main effect of Generation

(p = 0.125)

COMPLEX INTERACTIONS Stress and Generation

Discussion & Conclusions

Statistically, no significant differences were found regarding the lenition of intervocalic /b d g/ between heritage and immigrant speakers. As in prior investigations, Stress was found to be extremely important in the conditioning of /b d g/and significant interactions with Stress show that heritage speakers exhibit more lenition than immigrant speakers in certain phonological contexts.     Due to the small speaker pool and large amount of individual variation, future studies should consider a more measurable definition of heritage speaker as well as examine a larger group of individuals.

Carrasco, P., Hualde, J. I., & Simonet, M. (2012). Dialectal Differences in Spanish Voiced Obstruent Allophony: Costa Rican versus Iberian Spanish. Phonetica, 69(3), 149-179. Colantoni, L., & Marinescu, I. (2010). The scope of stop weakening in Argentine Spanish. In Selected Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology, 100-114. Eddington, D. (2011). What are the contextual phonetic variants of /β, ð, ɣ / in colloquial spanish? Probus, 23(1), 1-19. Hualde, J. I. (2005). The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Knightly, L.M., Jun, S., Oh, J.S., & Au, T.K. (2003). Production benefits of childhood overhearing. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114, 465-474. Michnowicz, J. (2011). Dialect standardization in Merida, Yucatan: The Case of (bdg). Revista internacional de lingüística iberoamericana, 18, 191-212. Michnowicz, J., Ronquest, R., Cooper, M., Ramos-Arbolí, I. & Sferruzzo, C. (2014, February). Intervocalic /bdg/ in NC Spanish: Heritage and Immigrant Speech. Paper presented at Spanish Linguistics in North Carolina: SLINKI, Boone, NC.

http://ui.uncc.edu/story/hispanic-latino-population-north-carolina-cities-census

-Heritage speakers of Spanish are able to produce the voiced stops /b d g/ in Spanish at more advanced levels (closer to those of native speakers) than the average late L2 learner (Knightly et al., 2003).

*Born in U.S. = Heritage *Born in Mexico = Immigrant

•  2357 tokens of /b d g/ intensity (50 of each /b, d, g/) •  Chi-square and One Level analysis (speaker as a

random factor) run in Rbrul •  Conditional Inference Trees in R

COMPLEX INTERACTIONS Stress and Age of Arrival

*Distinction- Atonic syllables, for /b/, /d/, both

Heritage & Immigrant

*Distinction- Tonic syllables: Heritage- Word Position & Variable

Immigrant- Preceding Context

AOA = Age of Arrival

*Child: 11 years or less

*Teen-Adult: 12+ years

*Distinction- Atonic syllables: Child: /d/

Teen-Adult: /d/, Word Position

*Distinction- Tonic syllables:

Child Teen-Adult:

Preceding Context

VARIABLE BY STRESS

GENERATION BY VARIABLE

Possible Explanations: Hypercorrection, Simplification à Age of Arrival

1.  Significant Linguistic Factors: Stress, Variable, Preceding and Following Context 2.   Patterns of /b d g/ Productions - Immigrant vs. Heritage Speech: Large amount of individual variation, especially

among immigrant speakers 3.  Linguistic Contact: Influence of English is not apparent in the speech patterns of heritage speakers

 

just as much in the past as in present; less lenition of /g/ than /b/ and /d/ (Knightly et al., 2003; Rao, 2012).

-Lenition is influenced by: Stress, Word Position, Preceding and Following Context, Speech Style, and Dialect among others (Carrasco et al., 2012; Colantoni & Marinescu, 2010; Eddington, 2011; Michnowicz, 2011).

Rao, R. (2012). Manifestations of /b, d, g/ in (two groups of) heritage speakers of Spanish. In Selected Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonetics and Phonology, 104-118.

 Special thanks to Dr. Jim Michnowicz and Dr. Rebecca Ronquest