Foreign Accent in Adult Simultaneous Bilinguals

Abstract

The study reported in this paper examines foreign accent (FA) in adult simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers). Specifically, we investigate how accent is affected if a first language is acquired as a minority (heritage) language as compared to a majority (dominant) language. We compare the perceived FA in both languages of 38 adult 2L1ers (German-French and German-Italian) to that of monolingual native speakers (L1ers) and late second language learners (L2ers). Naturalistic speech samples are judged by 84 native speakers of the respective languages. Results indicate that the majority language is always spoken without an FA, while results for the heritage language fall between those of L1 and L2 speakers. For the heritage language, we further show that a native accent correlates with length of residence in the heritage country during childhood but not during adulthood. Furthermore, raters have comparatively more difficulties when judging the accent of a heritage speaker. The results of this study add to our current understanding of what factors shape the phonology of a heritage language system in adulthood.

Foreign Accent in Pre- and Primary School Heritage Bilinguals

“…There has been some discussion in the context of late second language learners on whether it is crucial to work with experienced (i.e., phonetically trained) raters, but with no clear advantage pointing to either of the two types (see Jesney 2004). Therefore, in a study on early bilinguals, Kupisch et al (2014) engaged 50% of each type, finding no difference between those groups. An additional challenge pertaining to child speech is the fact that children's sound systems are still in the process of developing and that it may be difficult to distinguish "developmental" accents from "foreign" accents.…”

“…While many accent rating studies have focused on late L2 learners (see Jesney 2004 for an excellent overview), only a few studies have assessed the perceived accents of early bilinguals and have included ratings for both languages. Kupisch et al (2014) compared HSs when speaking their HL to (i) monolingual speakers of the same language, (ii) late L2 learners and (iii) bilinguals with the same language combination but an inverse dominance relation between ML and HL. For example, HSs of Italian in Germany were compared to (i) monolingual controls from Italy, (ii) L2 speakers of Italian and (iii) HSs of German in Italy speaking Italian as their ML.…”

“…With regards to proficiency in their heritage language, HSs are generally said to possess native-like levels of pronunciation and fluency (e.g., Montrul 2008, p. 163;Polinsky and Scontras 2020, p. 8;Rothman 2009, p. 157). Indeed, research has shown that HSs have relatively "authentic" pronunciation, differing in this respect from late L2 learners (Au et al 2008;Kupisch et al 2014;Flores and Rato 2016;Kupisch et al 2020;Chang et al 2008;Saadah 2011). This is not surprising, since many phonetic and phonological properties are amongst the earliest acquired properties of language and should therefore be relatively resistant to attrition and resilient to cross-linguistic influence (CLI) (Montrul 2008, p. 71;Polinsky and Scontras 2020, p. 8).…”

“…In reality, however, HSs are often deemed foreign-sounding in their heritage language, and native speaker raters can easily detect accent features of the speakers' dominant language (Kupisch et al 2014;Lloyd-Smith et al 2020;Kupisch et al 2020 et al (2013, p. 137), while putting forward that HSs tend to retain their native phonological contrasts in the HL, also mention that the phonetic values of vowels and consonants may nevertheless be affected, thus contributing to a non-native accent. Similarly, while pointing out that "aspects of phonetics and phonological competence appear to be robust in heritage languages", Polinsky and Scontras (2020, p. 10) also observe that HSs are distinguishable from monolingual native speakers because of their "heritage accent".…”

“…While Benmamoun et al (2013, p. 140) observed that research on HSs' phonology has "barely scratched the surface", numerous publications on adult bilingual HSs have since been published (on segmental properties, see, e.g., Amengual 2012Amengual , 2016Nagy and Kochetov 2013;Mayr and Siddika 2018;Elias et al 2017;Kissling 2018;Einfeldt et al 2019; on supra-segmental properties, see, e.g., Chang et al 2011;Colantoni et al 2016;Henriksen 2016;Kim 2019Kim , 2020. Studies on global 1 accent that have looked at both native languages of adult HSs have shown that HSs are most often perceived as foreign speakers when speaking their HL but as native when speaking their ML (Kupisch et al 2014(Kupisch et al , 2020Lloyd-Smith et al 2020). In other words, influence in adult HSs is largely unidirectional, although there are some interesting exceptions, typically observed in populations where the HL predominates in the home, e.g., Sylheti-speakers in the UK, Turkish speakers in Germany (e.g., Mayr and Siddika 2018;Kupisch et al 2020).…”