Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

Table of Contents - 2006 - Volume 9, Issue 01  


Production of coronal stops by simultaneous bilingual adults 1

MEGHA SUNDARA a1c1, LINDA POLKA a1 and SHARI BAUM a1
a1 McGill University

Article author query
sundara m   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 
polka l   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 
baum s   [PubMed][Google Scholar] 

Abstract

This study investigated acoustic-phonetics of coronal stop production by adult simultaneous bilingual and monolingual speakers of Canadian English (CE) and Canadian French (CF). Differences in the phonetics of CF and CE include voicing and place of articulation distinctions. CE has a two-way voicing distinction (in syllable initial position) contrasting short-and long-lag VOT; coronal stops in CE are described as alveolar. CF also has a two-way voicing distinction, but contrasting lead and short-lag VOT; coronal stops in CF are described as dental. Acoustic analyses of stop consonants for both VOT and dental/alveolar place of articulation are reported. Results indicate that simultaneous bilingual as well as monolingual adults produce language-specific differences, albeit not in the same way, across CF and CE for voicing and place. Similarities and differences between simultaneous bilingual and monolingual adults are discussed to address phonological organization in simultaneous bilingual adults.

(Published Online February 27 2006)
(Received May 12 2004)
(Revised April 18 2005)
(Revised July 6 2005)
(Accepted July 18 2005)


Correspondence:
c1 Address for correspondence Megha Sundara, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, Box 357988, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-7988, USA E-mail: msundara@u.washington.edu

Footnotes

1 This is part of M. Sundara's doctoral thesis. It was supported by an Internal Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant from McGill University to M. Sundara (202686) and a Discovery Grant to L. Polka from Canada's Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (RGPIN 105397). We would like to thank Georgina Hernandez for her help with collecting the French samples and Fred Genesee, Susan Guion and two anonymous reviewers for comments on previous versions of this paper.


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