Patterns of Short-Term Phonetic Interference in Bilingual Speech

Abstract

Previous research indicates that alternating between a bilingual's languages during speech production can lead to short-term increases in cross-language phonetic interaction. However, discrepancies exist between the reported L1-L2 effects in terms of direction and magnitude, and sometimes the effects are not found at all. The present study focused on L1 interference in L2, examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) of English voiceless stops produced by L1-dominant Czech-English bilinguals-interpreter trainees highly proficient in L2-English. We tested two hypotheses: (1) switching between languages induces an immediate increase in L1 interference during code-switching; and (2) due to global language co-activation, an increase in L1-to-L2 interference occurs when bilinguals interpret (translate) a message from L1 into L2 even if they do not produce L1 speech. Fourteen bilinguals uttered L2-English sentences under three conditions: L2-only, code-switching into L2, and interpreting into L2. Against expectation, the results showed that English VOT in the bilingual tasks tended to be longer and less Czech-like compared to the English-only task. This contradicts an earlier finding of L2 VOT converging temporarily towards L1 VOT values for comparable bilingual tasks performed by speakers from the same bilingual population. Participant-level inspection of our data suggests that besides language-background differences, individual language-switching strategies contribute to discrepancies between studies.

Mixed language processing increases cross-language phonetic transfer in Bengali–English bilinguals

“…Vowel chart for oral monophthongs in Bengali, from Ghosh (2016) performance interference (Paradis, 1993)). Given their transient nature, dynamic changes in production during mixed-language use are generally attributed to the latter, e.g., online processing costs (Olson, 2013;Šimáčková & Podlipskỳ, 2015;Tsui, Tong, & Chan, 2019, VOT), language mode (Simonet, 2014, vowel quality), context-awareness (Khattab, 2013, phonological variables). What triggers this interaction?…”

“…(i) in the absence of other manipulations, productions in a bilingual language mode show increased cross-language influence compared to a monolingual mode (Simonet, 2014;Simonet & Amengual, 2020, vowel quality); (ii) (however, language mode is not the sole source of influence during mixed language usestudies comparing switched and nonswitched tokens produced in the same test block (identical language mode) (Olson, 2016;Tsui et al, 2019, VOT), or spontaneous conversation (Piccinini & Arvaniti, 2015, VOT), have still reported a difference, suggesting that independently of mode, switching between languages triggers a local increase in cross-language transfer; (iii) how the two sources interact to influence the final outcome of transfer is not fully understood: Olson (2016, VOT) found no additive effects of language mode, Olson (2013, VOT) found a balanced language context to inhibit transfer compared to unbalanced contexts. Other studies have not analyzed the two separately, eliciting switched tokens in a bilingual test block and nonswitched tokens in a monolingual test block, separated by a few hours to days (Elias et al, 2017, vowel quality), (Antoniou, Best, Tyler, & Kroos, 2011;Bullock & Toribio, 2009;Schwartz, Balas, & Rojczyk, 2015;Šimáčková & Podlipskỳ, 2015, 2018.…”

Language Use and Linguistic Structure: Proceedings of the Olomouc Linguistics Colloquium 2021

“…Do L1-Czech L2-English bilinguals, who are advanced non-immersion learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), produce /k/ with distinct VOT values in L2 English and L1 Czech? We expected them to do so based on observation of other learners from the same population (Šimáčková and Podlipský 2018). Nevertheless, demonstrating that the bilinguals could categorically separate their k-sounds in terms of VOT was necessary before investigating gradient VOT shifts induced by switching.…”

Introducing the Special Issue: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching

“…A paper by Šimáčková and Podlipský (2018) investigates the extent of first language (L1) phonetic interference in the bilingual vs. monolingual mode for late adult Czech-English bilinguals who were training as interpreters. A previous study by the same authors had found that code-switching led to more Czech-influenced speech in L2 English than in monolingual English productions, but in the previous study not all participants had training in interpreting.…”