The Effects of Language Contact on Non-Native Vowel Sequences in Lexical Borrowings: The Case of Media Lengua

Abstract

Media Lengua (ML), a mixed language derived from Quichua and Spanish, exhibits a phonological system that largely conforms to that of Quichua acoustically. Yet, it incorporates a large number of vowel sequences from Spanish which do not occur in the Quichua system. This includes the use of mid-vowels, which are phonetically realized in ML as largely overlapping with the high-vowels in acoustic space. We analyze and compare production of vowel sequences by speakers of ML, Quichua, and Spanish through the use of generalized additive mixed models to determine statistically significant differences between vowel formant trajectories. Our results indicate that Spanish-derived ML vowel sequences frequently differ significantly from their Spanish counterparts, largely occupying a more central region of the vowel space and frequently exhibiting markedly reduced trajectories over time. In contrast, we find only one case where an ML vowel sequence differs significantly from its Quichua counterpart—and even in this case the difference from Spanish is substantially greater. Our findings show how the vowel system of ML successfully integrates novel vowel sequence patterns from Spanish into what is essentially Quichua phonology by markedly adapting their production, while still maintaining contrasts which are not expressed in Quichua.

Language exposure predicts children’s phonetic patterning: Evidence from language shift

“…Although evidence for bilingual dominance, and thus exposure, effects for children's phonetic patterning is fairly scarce (but see Bijeljac-Babic, Serres, Höhle, and Nazzi 2012), these influences are well-documented for adults in situations of language contact (Henriksen, García-Amaya, Coetzee, and Wissing 2019, Mooney 2019, Onosson and Stewart 2021, Simonet 2011, Yao and Chang 2016. For example, Guion (2003) found that age of Spanish acquisition affected the ability of Quichua-Spanish speakers in highland Ecuador to partition the vowel space across the two languages.…”