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Intonational convergence in language contact: Utterance-final F0 contours in Catalan–Spanish early bilinguals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 July 2011

Miquel Simonet*
Affiliation:
Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of Arizonasimonet@email.arizona.edu

Abstract

This study investigates utterance-final pitch accents in declaratives in two contact languages (Catalan and Spanish) as produced by two groups of Catalan–Spanish bilinguals (Catalan-dominant and Spanish-dominant). It contributes to a growing body of research showing that bilinguals transfer the intonational patterns of their native language to their non-native language, and it provides a sociolinguistic profile of an intonational variable in a language contact situation. We also examine the interaction of native and non-native patterns within the performance of the bilinguals. Evidence is presented for the existence of a process of phonetic category assimilation of non-native pitch contrasts to native pitch contours, as well as for phonetic new-category formation in second language learning.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2011

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