Prosodic Patterns in Sylheti-English Bilinguals

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to investigate prosodic prominence across three groups of Sylheti-English bilinguals: first-generation who arrived as adults, first-generation who arrived as children, and second-generation, i.e., born in the United Kingdom to parents who grew up in Bangladesh. To measure prominence, f0, duration, and intensity were measured across disyllabic words in Sylheti and English. The results showed significant differences in the f0 analysis. Regarding monolinguals, Sylheti prominence displayed a rising contour, in contrast to the English falling contour. In Sylheti, the bilinguals born in the United Kingdom were the only group significantly different from the Sylheti monolinguals, displaying an English-like falling pattern in their Sylheti prominence. In English, the late arrival bilinguals displayed a Sylheti-like prominence realization, but the early arrivals and those born in the United Kingdom approximated the monolingual English prominence realization. Overall, language use patterns were the most significant factor related to the bilinguals’ prominence realization.

Predictors of language proficiency and cultural identification in heritage bilinguals

“…There are several factors impacting heritage language proficiency, including language exposure (Gathercole and Thomas, 2009;Hoff et al, 2012;Thomas et al, 2014;Gollan et al, 2015;Jia and Paradis, 2015;Unsworth, 2016;Hovsepian, 2018;Makarova et al, 2019;Giguere and Hoff, 2020;Tao et al, 2021;Vorobyeva and Bel, 2021) and frequency of use (Hakuta and D'Andrea, 1992;Bedore et al, 2012;Albirini, 2014;Chen et al, 2018;Schmid and Yilmaz, 2018;Daskalaki et al, 2019;Otwinowska et al, 2021) in and outside of the home. Access to a heritage language community that extends beyond the home context positively predicts heritage language vocabulary and lexical retrieval (Albirini, 2014;Gollan et al, 2015;Schmid and Yilmaz, 2018;Tao et al, 2021), morphosyntax (Kupisch and Rothman, 2018;Rodina et al, 2020;Torregrossa et al, 2022), and pronunciation (Au and Romo, 1997;de Leeuw et al, 2010;Stoehr et al, 2017;Karayayla and Schmid, 2019;McCarthy and de Leeuw, 2022). Being surrounded by native speakers of the heritage language affords opportunities to listen and practice the language in various settings and discuss a wide variety of topics.…”

Phonological variation and linguistic diversity in Bangladeshi dialects: An exploration of sound patterns and sociolinguistic significance

“…Habib (2012) highlights the challenges and opportunities presented by phonological variation, suggesting that a detailed examination of pronunciation differences offers insights into the linguistic identity of various communities. This point is further developed by McCarthy and de Leeuw (2022) who examine intonation patterns across Bangladeshi dialects, revealing the potential of phonological analysis to uncover underlying linguistic structures.…”