Phonological interaction in Spanish-English bilinguals: effects of cognate usage on voice onset time of voiced stops

ABSTRACT

This study compared Spanish-English bilinguals’ and English monolinguals’ VOT values for /b, d, g/ in cognates and non-cognates. Twenty-six young adult participants (fourteen bilinguals and twelve monolinguals, mean age 24 years) were administered a picture-naming task, balanced for cognate and non-cognate forms. VOT values of 30 target words per participant and per language were measured. The data support cross-linguistic interaction in bilinguals’ phonologies and indicate that cognates can interfere with bilinguals’ phonemic distinctions. In English, bilinguals’ VOTs exhibited significantly greater lead voicing than monolinguals’, and, for all participants, /b/ had longer lead voicing than /d/ and /g/. Comparing bilinguals’ VOTs for Spanish versus English revealed significant differences by language (English shorter), between /b/ and /g/, and between cognates and non-cognates, with shorter lead voicing in cognates than in non-cognates. More detailed results showed that in bilinguals’ Spanish productions with word-initial /d/ and English productions with word-initial /b/, cognates exhibited shorter lead voicing (more English-like) than non-cognates. The conclusion is that the bilinguals’ VOTs exhibited some cross-linguistic influence in relation to cognate usage, in the direction toward their dominant language, English. Further analyses also revealed a role of current daily usage in VOT performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingualism
• phonological interaction
• cognates
• voice onset time
• VOT

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this study formed the M.A. thesis of the first author at Florida International University. The first author was supported financially by a Graduate Teaching Assistantship during this project. The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Mehmet Yavaş for raising our interest in cognates and voice onset time, and for his invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The analyses were performed by subject. There are not enough items per cell (N = 5) to be able to carry out meaningful by-item analyses. However, we have examined the means and ranges of variation in VOTs across the items per cell, and by participant group. These are shown in the Table below. It can be seen, first, that there is considerable consistency across the items within a cell: For English Monolinguals, for each type, the range within a cell varies only between 4 and 13 ms from the mean. For Bilinguals in English, the variation is higher, but stays between 13 and 31 ms from the mean. Furthermore, the ranges for the Bilinguals in English do not overlap with those for the Monolinguals in English except in one case (cognates with /g/), supporting the finding in the paper that the bilinguals’ VOTs in English involved earlier onset of voicing than the monolinguals’. For the Bilinguals in Spanish, the means were consistently longer onsets than those for the comparable items in the Bilinguals’ English (consistent with the major findings in the paper), and the ranges again varied between 11 and 37 ms from the means.

Table. Mean VOTs, and ranges, across lexical items per language per cell, by participant group.

Additional information

Funding

The first author was supported financially by Florida International University, through a Graduate Teaching Assistantship, during this project.

Notes on contributors

Sophia A. Younes

Sophia Younes earned her master’s degree in linguistics from Florida International University in 2018. Her thesis study focused on language system interaction in Spanish–English bilinguals. Ms. Younes’ interests lie in multilingualism, language acquisition, and bilingual language interaction. She currently works as an English language instructor at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.

Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole

Dr. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole has worked extensively on children’s language acquisition, in both monolingual and bilingual children, focusing especially on English and Spanish monolinguals and on Spanish–English and Welsh–English bilinguals, and especially on morpho-syntax and semantics. Her work appears in journals such as Journal of Child Language, First Language, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Child Development, and Second Language Research, in book chapters, and in edited volumes such as her Routes to Language, Issues for the Assessment of Bilinguals, and Solutions for the Assessment of Bilinguals. She served as Professor of Linguistics at Florida International University, in Miami, Florida, from 2012 to 2018, and 1981 to 1995. From 1995 to 2012, she served as Professor of Psychology at Bangor University, Wales, and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Bilingualism. She currently serves as the President of the International Association for the Study of Child Language.