When a bilingual switches languages, do they switch their "voice"? Using a new conversational corpus of speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals (N = 34), this paper examines the talker-specific acoustic signature of bilingual voices. Following prior work in voice quality variation, 24 filter and source-based acoustic measurements are estimated. The analysis summarizes mean differences for these dimensions, in addition to identifying the underlying structure of each talker's voice across languages with principal components analyses. Canonical redundancy analyses demonstrate that while talkers vary in the degree to which they have the same "voice" across languages, all talkers show strong similarity with themselves.

Learners often struggle with L2 sounds, yet little is known about the role of prior pronunciation knowledge and explicit articulatory training in language acquisition. This study asks if existing pronunciation knowledge can bootstrap word learning, and whether short-term audiovisual articulatory training for tongue position with and without a production component has an effect on lexical retention. Participants were trained and tested on stimuli with perceptually salient segments that are challenging to produce. Results indicate that pronunciation knowledge plays an important role in word learning. While much about the extent and shape of this role remains unclear, this study sheds light in three main areas. First, prior pronunciation knowledge leads to increased accuracy in word learning, as all groups trended toward lower accuracy on pseudowords with two novel segments, when compared with those with one or none. Second, all training and control conditions followed similar patterns, with training neither aiding nor inhibiting retention; this is a noteworthy result as previous work has found that the inclusion of production in training leads to decreased performance when testing for retention. Finally, higher production accuracy during practice led to higher retention after the word-learning task, indicating that individual differences and successful training are potentially important indicators of retention. This study provides support for the claim that pronunciation matters in L2 word learning.

Bilinguals are capable of retuning phonetic categories in both languages through lexically-guided perceptual learning, but recent work suggests that some bilingual speakers may lose the ability to adapt in the native language. In the study reported here, early Cantonese-English bilinguals, who are on average English-dominant, successfully retuned Cantonese /f/. Scores of Cantonese-English dominance were not shown to correlate with phonetic retuning. The results are discussed in light of what may support the maintenance of perceptual flexibility in a lesser-used language.

Listeners need to accommodate pronunciations that vary widely. Lexically-guided perceptual adaptation has been well documented in the literature, but relatively little is known about its limits. Moreover, there are at least two plausible mechanisms supporting adaptation for sound categories: targeted shifts towards the novel pronunciation or a general relaxation of criteria. This paper examines a limit of perceptual adaptation — asymmetries in adaptation to the voicing and devoicing of coronal fricatives in English — and suggests that typology or synchronic experience affects how listeners adapt. A corpus study of coronal fricative substitution patterns confirmed that North American English listeners are more likely to be exposed to devoiced /z/ than voiced /s/. Across two perceptual adaptation experiments, listeners in test conditions head naturally produced devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/ in critical items within sentences, while control listeners were exposed to identical sentences with canonical fricative pronunciations. Perceptual adaptation was tested via word endorsement rates in a lexical decision test, with devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/, as well as a novel alveopalatalized pronunciation, to determine whether adaptation was targeted in the direction of the exposed variant or reflected more general relaxation. Results indicate there was targeted and word-specific adaptation for /z/ devoicing. Conversely, there was some evidence of /s/ voicing eliciting a more general category relaxation. These results underscore the role of prior perceptual experiences, and suggest a need for an evaluation stage in lexically-guided perceptual learning, where listeners assess whether a heard item merits an update to the representation.

While crosslinguistic influence is widespread in bilingual speech production, it is less clear which aspects of representation are shared across languages, if any. Most prior work examines phonetically distinct yet phonologically similar sounds, for which phonetic convergence suggests a cross-language link within individuals [1]. Convergence is harder to assess when sounds are already similar, as with English and Cantonese initial long-lag stops. Here, the articulatory uniformity framework [2,3,4] is leveraged to assess whether bilinguals share an underlying laryngeal feature across languages, and describe the nature of cross-language links. Using the SpiCE corpus of spontaneous Cantonese-English bilingual speech [5], this paper asks whether Cantonese-English bilinguals exhibit uniform voice-onset time for long-lag stops within and across languages. Results indicate moderate patterns of uniformity within-language-replicating prior work [2, 6]-and weaker patterns across languages. The analysis, however, raises many questions, as correlations were generally lower compared to prior work, and talkers did not adhere to expected ordinal relationships by place of articulation. Talkers also retained clear differences for /t/ and /k/, despite expectations of similarity. Yet at the same time, more of the overall variation seems to derive from individual-specific differences. While many questions remain, the uniformity framework shows promise.

When a bilingual switches languages, do they switch their "voice"? Using a new conversational corpus of speech from early Cantonese-English bilinguals (N = 34), this paper examines the talker-specific acoustic signature of bilingual voices. Following prior work in voice quality variation, 24 filter and source-based acoustic measurements are estimated. The analysis summarizes mean differences for these dimensions, in addition to identifying the underlying structure of each talker's voice across languages with principal components analyses. Canonical redundancy analyses demonstrate that while talkers vary in the degree to which they have the same "voice" across languages, all talkers show strong similarity with themselves.

In Cantonese and several other Chinese languages, /n/ is merging with /l/. The Cantonese merger appears categorical, with /n/ becoming /l/ word-initially. This project aims to describe the status of /n/ and /l/ in bilingual Cantonese and English speech to better understand individual differences at the interface of crosslinguistic influence and sound change. We examine bilingual speech using the SpiCE corpus, composed of speech from 34 early Cantonese-English bilinguals. Acoustic measures were collected on pre-vocalic nasal and lateral onsets in both languages. If bilinguals maintain separate representations for corresponding segments across languages, smaller differences between /n/ and /l/ are predicted in Cantonese compared to English. Measures of mid-frequency spectral tilt suggest that the /n/ and /l/ contrast is robustly maintained in English, but not Cantonese. The spacing of F2-F1 suggests small differences between Cantonese /n/ and /l/, and robust differences in English. While cross-language categories appear independent, substantial individual differences exist in the data. These data contribute to the understanding of the /n/ and /l/ merger in Cantonese and other Chinese languages, in addition to providing empirical and theoretical insights into crosslinguistic influence in early bilinguals.

In Cantonese and several other Chinese languages, /n/ is merging with /l/. The Cantonese merger appears categorical, with /n/ becoming /l/ word-initially. This project aims to describe the status of /n/ and /l/ in bilingual Cantonese and English speech to better understand individual differences at the interface of crosslinguistic influence and sound change. We examine bilingual speech using the SpiCE corpus, composed of speech from 34 early Cantonese-English bilinguals. Acoustic measures were collected on pre-vocalic nasal and lateral onsets in both languages. If bilinguals maintain separate representations for corresponding segments across languages, smaller differences between /n/ and /l/ are predicted in Cantonese compared to English. Measures of mid-frequency spectral tilt suggest that the /n/ and /l/ contrast is robustly maintained in English, but not Cantonese. The spacing of F2-F1 suggests small differences between Cantonese /n/ and /l/, and robust differences in English. While cross-language categories appear independent, substantial individual differences exist in the data. These data contribute to the understanding of the /n/ and /l/ merger in Cantonese and other Chinese languages, in addition to providing empirical and theoretical insights into crosslinguistic influence in early bilinguals.