Deconstructing Heritage Language Dominance: Effects of Proficiency, Use, and Input on Heritage Speakers’ Production of the Spanish Alveolar Tap

Kim, Ji Young; Repiso-Puigdelliura, Gemma

doi:10.1159/000501188

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…One should always keep in mind that social and linguistic factors play a part in phonetic shifts. As was the case in Henriksen (2015) and Kim and Repiso-Puigdelliura (2020), careful attention should be paid to the speech patterns of individual speakers. In the present study, no speaker systematically pronounced all analyzed segments as "occlusive" or "full-approximant", and the degree of lenition is variable regardless of the speaker's generation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Examination of Social, Phonetic, and Lexical Variables on the Lenition of Intervocalic Voiced Stops by Spanish Heritage Speakers

Blair

Lease

2021

Languages

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The lenition of Spanish intervocalic voiced stops, commonly grouped as /bdg/, has increasingly been examined within Spanish as a Heritage Language research. This study seeks to identify social, phonetic, and lexical factors that predict the degree of lenition of /bdg/ among heritage speakers of Spanish. We analyzed 850 intervocalic productions of /bdg/ by 20 adult Spanish heritage speakers of various generations in an oral word list production task. Using spectrographic analyses, productions were categorized as full approximant, tense approximant, and occlusive. Results from linear mixed-effects models indicated that the phonetic context and the number of family generations residing in the US significantly predicted the degree of lenition of intervocalic voiced segments while age of acquisition of Spanish, current contact hours, and cognate status did not predict changes in the degree of lenition. Specifically, as the speaker’s number of family generations residing in the US increased, fewer segments were lenited. We conclude that variations in /bdg/ lenition among heritage speakers of Spanish reflect the changes in pronunciation of other segments of heritage speakers over generations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Examination of Social, Phonetic, and Lexical Variables on the Lenition of Intervocalic Voiced Stops by Spanish Heritage Speakers

Blair

Lease

2021

Languages

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“…Regarding the first limitation, we performed a categorical classification of /r/ production using visual inspection of the speakers' acoustic output. While the results of our study are useful for understanding how sociophonetic variation unfolds in canonical varieties of Spanish, we have not established whether our classification system, based on number of lingual constrictions, can be supported through a more fine-grained analysis involving continuous outcome measures (e.g., Kim & Repiso Puigdelliura, 2020). Regarding the second limitation, this study performed acoustic analysis of /r/ under the assumption that the differences present in the spectrogram reflect distinct articulatory configurations.…”

Section: Limitations Of This Studymentioning

confidence: 90%

Sociophonetic Investigation of the Spanish Alveolar Trill /r/ in Two Canonical-Trill Varieties

Henriksen¹,

Greenley

Galvano

2022

Lang Speech

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The “hyper-variation” present in rhotic sounds makes them particularly apt for sociophonetic research. This paper investigates the variable realization of the voiced alveolar-trill phoneme /r/ through an acoustic analysis of unscripted speech produced by 80 speakers of Spanish. Although the most common phonetic variant of /r/ contained two lingual constrictions, we find substantial inter-speaker variation in our data, ranging from zero to five lingual contacts. The results demonstrate that the variation in Spanish results from a systematic interaction of factors, deriving from well-documented processes of consonantal lenition (e.g., weakening in unstressed syllables) in addition to processes inherent to the trill’s articulation (e.g., high-vowel antagonism). Importantly, speaker sex displayed the strongest effect among all the predictors, which leads us to consider the role of sociolinguistic factors, in addition to possible biomechanical differences, on /r/ production. We contextualize the findings within a literature that theorizes rhotic consonants as a single class of sounds despite remarkable patterns of cross-language and speaker-specific variation.

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“…For languages such as AmNo that are in sustained contact with English, there has been considerable research into potential influences of English [ɹ] on HL and L2 rhotic patterns, especially for Spanish (Face, 2006 ; Henriksen, 2015 ; Amengual, 2016 ; Kim and Repiso Puigdelliura, 2018 ). For AmNo, Natvig ( 2021 ) finds remarkable stability in the production of the typical tap or trill ([ɾ/r]) variant.…”

Section: Defining Moribund Hlsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing Challenges in Formal Research on Moribund Heritage Languages: A Path Forward

2021

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The substantial uptick in research on heritage languages over the past three decades has enhanced our understanding of the development of bilingual grammars throughout the lifespan. This interest has been accompanied by a noticeable increase of experimental work, often combined with some degree of formal rigor. Exclusively and predominantly formal research on these languages—especially studies whose empirical focus centers on moribund heritage varieties—occasionally encounters criticism, due primarily to a lack of understanding of the methodology and objectives of this body of research as a whole. The purpose of this positional essay is to once again elucidate with clarity the motivation and importance of formal linguistic research on these languages, providing a fruitful path forward for continued work in this well-established field of linguistic inquiry.

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Deconstructing Heritage Language Dominance: Effects of Proficiency, Use, and Input on Heritage Speakers’ Production of the Spanish Alveolar Tap

Cited by 15 publications

References 48 publications

An Examination of Social, Phonetic, and Lexical Variables on the Lenition of Intervocalic Voiced Stops by Spanish Heritage Speakers

An Examination of Social, Phonetic, and Lexical Variables on the Lenition of Intervocalic Voiced Stops by Spanish Heritage Speakers

Sociophonetic Investigation of the Spanish Alveolar Trill /r/ in Two Canonical-Trill Varieties

Addressing Challenges in Formal Research on Moribund Heritage Languages: A Path Forward

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