Shared or Separate Representations? The Spanish Palatal Nasal in Early Spanish/English Bilinguals

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine phonetic interactions in early Spanish/English bilinguals to see if they have established a representation for the Spanish palatal nasal /ɲ/ (e.g., /kaɲon/ cañón ‘canyon’) that is separate from the similar, yet acoustically distinct English /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /kænjn̩/ ‘canyon’). Twenty heritage speakers of Spanish completed a delayed repetition task in each language, in which a set of disyllabic nonce words were produced in a carrier phrase. English critical stimuli contained an intervocalic /n+j/ sequence (e.g., /dɛnjɑ/ ‘denya’) and Spanish critical stimuli contained intervocalic /ɲ/ (e.g., /deɲja/ ‘deña’). We measured the duration and formant contours of the following vocalic portion as acoustic indices of the /ɲ/~/n+j/ distinction. The duration data and formant contour data alike show that early bilinguals distinguish between the Spanish /ɲ/ and English /n+j/ in production, indicative of the maintenance of separate representations for these similar sounds and thus a lack of interaction between systems for bilinguals in this scenario. We discuss these discrete representations in comparison to previous evidence of shared and separate representations in this population, examining a set of variables that are potentially responsible for the attested distinction.

Language-Specific Prosody in Statements of Palenquero/Spanish Bilinguals

“…In addition to this, we have become increasingly aware of the vulnerability of prosody to bilingualism and language contact situations. In fact, bilingual speakers may be less exposed to one language input due to the strong influence of a majority language, accelerating prosodic convergence or simplification (Bullock 2009;Stefanich and Cabrelli 2020). Last but not least, prosody is inherently variable, as it is deployed to carry information about constituent and rhythmic structure (i.e., temporal limits), semantic and pragmatic meaning, and emotional content (Dupoux et al 2008, p. 3).…”