Spanish–English Cross-Linguistic Influence on Heritage Bilinguals’ Production of Uptalk

Abstract

The present study examines the production of uptalk in Spanish and in English by Spanish heritage speakers in Southern California. Following the L2 Intonation Learning Theory, we propose that cross-linguistic influence in heritage bilinguals’ uptalk may occur along multiple dimensions of intonation. In this study, we examined the systemic dimension (i.e., presence of uptalk and presence of uptalk with IP-final deaccenting), the frequency dimension (i.e., frequency of uptalk and frequency of uptalk with IP-final deaccenting), and the realizational dimension (i.e., pitch excursion and rise duration) of heritage bilinguals’ uptalk. Our data showed that the three dimensions of intonation demonstrate varying degrees of cross-linguistic influence. The heritage bilinguals produced uptalk with IP-final deaccenting in both languages (i.e., systemic dimension), but produced it more in English than in Spanish (i.e., frequency dimension). That is, IP-final deaccenting emerges in heritage bilinguals’ uptalk in Spanish, but heritage bilinguals seem to recognize that this is an English feature that is not allowed in Spanish and try to suppress it as much as possible when producing uptalk in Spanish. However, in the realizational dimension, the heritage bilinguals demonstrated either phonetic assimilation to English (i.e., pitch excursion) or individual variability conditioned by language learning experience (i.e., rise duration). The asymmetry found across the dimensions suggests that, when bilinguals’ two languages are in competition for finite online resources, such as in the case of spontaneous speech production, phonological distinctions between L1 and L2 prosodic structures are kept, whereas phonetic differences that do not lead to any change in meaning are more prone to undergo cross-linguistic influence in order to reduce online processing cost. This study attempts to fill a gap in the literature on the cross-linguistic influence of intonation by bringing attention to heritage bilinguals. Heritage bilingualism introduces bilingual contexts that are often left unnoticed in traditional L2 acquisition scenarios (e.g., transfer from L2 to L1 intonation, asymmetry between order of acquisition and language dominance). Given that many aspects of cross-linguistic influence are shared across bilinguals, the investigation of heritage bilinguals’ intonation will contribute to building robust models of bilingual intonation.

A Preliminary Exploration of Declarative Intonation in the Chilean Diaspora of Sweden

“…If we were to assume this perspective, in large part due to speech style similarities, we could posit that the falling pitch accent (H+L*) was already in the speech of our G1 speakers when they arrived in Sweden, was actually supported by contact with the similar, falling small tone accent 1 in Stockholm Swedish, and was then transmitted to G2 due to frequent interactions in Spanish and the density of the Chilean diaspora in the Stockholm area. This discussion shows some alignment with work on uptalk by Kim (2023) and Kim and Repiso-Puigdelliura (2021), where it was uncovered that while this feature is associated with Californians, it was also exhibited in monolingual speakers of Mexican Spanish but implemented in different ways. Through more detailed phonetic analyses and data sets of comparison, we can further elucidate the nature of the falling movements in question.…”

“…For both categories of focus, the former exhibited a preference for stress shift, while also using p-movement and simple clefts to a lesser degree, whereas the latter avoided stress shift and distinguished productions based on focus type, employing pseudo-clefts and p-movement for narrow information focus and simple clefts and focus fronting for contrastive focus. Finally, the last pair of studies to which we should draw attention, by Kim and Repiso-Puigdelliura (2021) and Kim (2023), deals with uptalk in heritage speakers of Mexican Spanish in California. While this feature is commonly tied to California English, the former study actually shows that it is present in the Spanish of both heritage speakers and monolingual speakers of Mexican Spanish, but is manifested in different ways (pointing to majority language influence in the former group), revealing that understanding the origin of intonational phenomena attested in heritage speech requires delving deeper into comparison groups rather than defaulting to majority language influence alone.…”