Language mixing and the phonetics of

vowels Marilou Guillemette, Leah Hoiting, Eric Iacono, Katarzyna

Muldner and Ida Toivonen

Why code-switching? We can get information on the bilingual (multilingual)

speaker’s phonology and phonetic realization by looking at instances of code-switching.

French-English bilinguals are common in a bilingual city like Ottawa, Ontario, so plenty of possible participants for a study.

A common assumption is that phonology is not affected in code-switching, but not a lot of experimental work has been done and results from these studies didn’t show any effects, so this generalization still holds.

Literature Review Crossover between languages is seen on the phonetic level, but not on the

phonological level in code-switching (Bullock and Toribio 2009).

Phonetic overlap can occur irrespective of the direction of CS.

Depending on fluency/level of proficiency in pronunciation of L2, some bilinguals may show a greater influence of one language over the other only in their CS pronunciation.

CS is also easier for production than perception (Macnamara 1967a, b).

Spontaneous bilingual speech containing code-switches takes no extra time than monolingual speech (Macnamara, Krauthammer, and Bolgar 1968).

Literature Review (Con’t) It was found that switching from a language to the other involves a total

change on the phonetic level (Grosjean and Miller 1994).

From this switch, phonetic anticipation or phonetic preservation on the first sound is observable.

It was shown that there is a categorical shift between English and French language phonetics, irrespective of the context.

It was also shown that bilinguals to produce merged or compromised VOT values compared to monolinguals (Flege and Eefting 1987).

It seems as if bilinguals are unaffected by the base language in production.

Literature Review (Con’t) Phonetic features of the base language can be applied to a second

language in a CS context that second language’s monolingual setting (Khattab 2002a, b)

Intra-sentential switches require a grasp of more complex syntactic structures and are typically not seen in children of a younger age or in people starting to acquire a second language (they require a high degree of both pragmatic and grammatical competence in both languages) (Köppe and Meisel 1995).

Challenges of a study on CS

Getting instances of CS that resemble natural speech as much as possible while staying within a controlled setting.

Verifying the level of fluency/proficiency in both of the target languages for each participant, knowing that there are several degrees of bilingualism/multilingualism.

There is very little literature on the topic and not a lot of experiments done, specifically on production, more specifically on vowels to look at as a starting point.

French and English phonology in context

The Experiment

Aim of Research To further look into whether there is an influence on the

phonetic realization of vowels when uttered in a code-switching environment.

Examined English words uttered in a English context and compared them to the same English words uttered in a French context

Examined French words Uttered in a French context and compared them to the same French words uttered in an English context.

Methods - Participants Stimuli was presented visually on a computer screen

Participants we obtained on a vonluntary basis within the 18-25 age range

Each participant was briefed on layout but not aim of study

Particpants were recorded across 3 separate channel recordings

Methods – Stimuli Monosyllabic words in both English and French

Four carrier phrases were used two in each language

Priming paragraph was an excerpt form the Goldilocks and the three bears story

Study Design Two Studies were used.

Study A French block followed by English block

Study B English block followed by French block

Study Design 1st Block

The study begins with a priming paragraph in French.

Followed by 20 sentences read aloud consisting of French target words in French carrier phrase

Finshing with 40 sentences read aloud consisting of both French target words (20) AND English target words (20) in French carrier phrases

Study Design 2nd Block

Previous block converted into an English context

Begins with reading aloud priming story in English

Followed by English target words uttered in English carrier phrases

Finshing with 40 sentences of English and French target words in English carrier phrases.

Conditions Each block creates 2 conditions totaling four across the

whole study.

French target words uttered in a French context

French target words uttered in a English context

English target words uttered in a English context

English target words uttered in a French context

Analysis Compared the duration of vowels in target words across

same and mixed language conditions

Compared the F1 values of target words in same language and mixed language conditions

Compared F2 values of target words in same and mixed language conditions

Results

English in the 2 contexts

Fig. 1: Mean duration for the English vowels in the English context and French context.

English in the 2 contexts F1 F2

Fig. 2: Mean F1 for the English vowels in the English context and French context.

Fig. 3: Mean F2 for the English vowels in the English context and French context.

French in the 2 contexts

Fig. 4: Mean duration for the French vowels in the French context and English context.

French in the 2 contexts F1 F2

Fig. 5: Mean F1 for the French vowels in the French context and English context.

Fig. 6: Mean F2 for the French vowels in the English context and French context.

Further comparison

Fig. 7: Mean duration for the English and French vowels in the English and French contexts divided by whether the vowel fell before a voiceless or a voiced consonant.

Discussion Possible hypotheses

Possible hypotheses Do you just speak slower in a mixed-language sentence? Or is this

is a side effect of the experiment; would it be true in instances of natural code-switching?

However, it is in fact *not* the case overall that vowels are simply longer in the mixed-language condition.

Based on our results so far, it seems that vowels before voiced consonants are significantly longer in mixed condition but vowels before voiceless consonants are not.

So, the difference in duration before voiced and voiceless consonants is larger in the mixed-language condition than in the same-language condition.

Thank you! Any questions?

References Auer, P. (Ed.). (2013). Code-switching in conversation: Language, interaction and identity. Routledge.

Broersma, M., & De Bot, K. (2006). Triggered codeswitching: A corpus-based evaluation of the original triggering hypothesis and a new alternative. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 9(01), 1-13.

Bullock, B. E., & Toribio, A. J. (Eds.). (2009). The Cambridge handbook of linguistic code-switching (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bullock, B. E., & Toribio, A. J. (2009). Trying to hit a moving target. Multidisciplinary approaches to code switching, 41.

Christoffels, I. K., Firk, C., & Schiller, N. O. (2007). Bilingual language control: An event-related brain potential study. Brain research, 1147, 192-208.

Edwards, M., & Dewaele, J. M. (2007). Trilingual conversations: A window into multicompetence. International journal of Bilingualism, 11(2), 221-242.

Flege, J. E., & Eefting, W. (1987). Cross-language switching in stop consonant perception and production by Dutch speakers of English. Speech Communication, 6(3), 185-202.

References (Con’t) Grosjean, F. (1997). Processing mixed language: Issues, findings, and models. Tutorials in

bilingualism: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 225-254.

Grosjean, F., & Li, P. (2012). The psycholinguistics of bilingualism. John Wiley & Sons.

Joshi, A. K. (1982, July). Processing of sentences with intra-sentential code-switching. In Proceedings of the 9th conference on Computational linguistics-Volume 1 (pp. 145-150). Academia Praha.

Macnamara, J. (1967). The bilingual's linguistic performance—a psychological overview. Journal of social issues, 23(2), 58-77.

Macnamara, J., Krauthammer, M., & Bolgar, M. (1968). Language switching in bilinguals as a function of stimulus and response uncertainty. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 78(2p1), 208.

Milroy, L., & Muysken, P. (Eds.). (1995). One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching. Cambridge University Press.

Pfaff, C. W. (1979). Constraints on language mixing: intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English. Language, 291-318.

More References Khattab, G. (2007). Variation in vowel production by English–

Arabic bilinguals. Laboratory phonology, 9, 383-410.

Köppe, R., & Meisel, J. M. (1995). Code-switching in bilingual first language acquisition. One speaker, two languages: Cross-disciplinary perspectives on code-switching, 276-301.

Winter, Bodo. 2011. Pseudo reduplication in phonetic research. ICPhS XVII, 2137—2140.

http://www.bodowinter.com/papers/Winter_2012_pseudoreplication.pdf