The Effects of Home Language and Bilingualism on the Realization of Lexical Stress in Welsh and Welsh English

Abstract

This study investigates effects of long-term language contact and individual linguistic experience on the realization of lexical stress correlates in Welsh and Welsh English. To this end, a production study was carried out in which participants were asked to read out Welsh and English disyllabic words with stress on the penultimate syllable, placed within carrier phrases. Recordings were made of the productions of Welsh and English target words, by two groups of Welsh-English bilinguals differing in home language, as well as the productions of English target words by Welsh English monolinguals and speakers of Southern Standard British English (SSBE). Acoustic measures were taken of fundamental frequency (f0) and intensity ratios of stressed and unstressed vowels, duration of stressed and unstressed vowels, and duration of the post-stress consonant. The results of acoustic comparisons of Welsh English with SSBE and Welsh revealed that SSBE differs from the other groups in all measures of lexical stress. Welsh and Welsh English, however, show considerable phonetic overlap, albeit with languagespecific differences in two of the five measures (unstressed vowel duration, intensity ratio). These findings suggest cross-language convergence in the realization of lexical stress in Welsh and Welsh English disyllabic words with penultimate stress. Individual linguistic experience, in turn, did not play a major role in the realization of lexical stress in these words. Bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals when speaking English, and home language also had no effect on any measure. This suggests that other factors must be responsible for the observed patterns. We discuss the possibility that the varieties of Welsh and Welsh English spoken in this community function as a sign of regional or peer group identity, rather than as markers of linguistic experience.

Can you tell by their English if they can speak Welsh? Accent perception in a language contact situation

“…Socio-indexical factors also need to be considered. Thus, our previous work on speech productions by 16- to 18-year-old students from a secondary school in West Wales with an English-medium and a Welsh-medium pathway showed no differences in the vowel realisations (Mayr et al, 2017) and lexical stress patterns (Mennen et al, under review) of monolinguals and bilinguals. We argued that the effects of linguistic experience may have been overridden by membership in a homogeneous peer group with shared values (see Nance, 2019, for similar results from children attending a Gaelic-medium primary school).…”

“…The participants’ comments also suggested perceived differences in vowel duration between monolinguals and bilinguals. In their comparison of Welsh, Welsh English, and Southern Standard British English (SSBE), Mennen et al (under review) found that stressed vowel durations were significantly longer in Welsh and Welsh English (between which there were no significant differences) than in SSBE. It is therefore possible that raters associated longer vowels with a more Welsh-influenced accent.…”

“…O’Rourke, Pujolar, & Ramallo, 2015), but also due to the fact that many ‘traditional speakers’ remain in communities where the dominant language is English (see, for example, Aitchison & Carter, 2004, for an overview). In terms of production, recent work has shown a tendency for bilingual speakers from both Welsh- and non-Welsh-speaking backgrounds to produce both English monophthongs and lexical stress near-identically to monolinguals from the same area (Mayr, Morris, Mennen, & Williams, 2017; Mennen, Kelly, Mayr, Morris, & Kong-Insam, under review). These studies focus on the production of single linguistic features, however, and it remains to be seen (a) to what extent the entire system of Welsh–English bilinguals is different from that of monolinguals from the same area and (b) to what extent these differences are perceptible to other speakers of Welsh English.…”

Electrophysiological Differentiation of the Effects of Stress and Accent on Lexical Integration in Highly Fluent Bilinguals

“…In contrast, lexical stress in Welsh is highly regular, consistently occurring on the penultimate syllable. Although irregular stress does occur, this is a highly uncommon exception predominantly found in English loanwords [35]. In comparison to English, the relative paucity of research on Welsh lexical stress means that the intricacies of its realisation and perception are less well understood, and consequently remain subject to some debate.…”

“…Thus, contrary to that of the majority of European languages [36], in which the stressed syllable is generally characterised by higher pitch, and greater duration, loudness and salience of the vowel, Welsh stress features phonological prominence of the final unstressed syllable relative to the stressed penult [37]. Despite the long-term language contact situation in Wales, in which Welsh, whilst increasingly spoken as a native language, coexists alongside English with Welsh monolingualism existing solely in some pre-school children, evidence suggests that stress realisation in Welsh has not entirely converged to resemble that of English [35].…”