The Effects of Code-Switching and Lexical Stress on Vowel Quality and Duration of Heritage Speakers of Spanish

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5901036
AutoresVanessa Elias (0000-0003-2564-5326, Indiana University Bloomington, autor de correspondencia), Sean Mckinnon (0000-0002-7553-2074, Indiana University Bloomington), Ángel Milla-Muñoz (Indiana University Bloomington)
Año2017
Volumen2
Número4
Páginas29
Fecha de publicación2017-12-21
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguages (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages2040029
OpenAlexW2781272599
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas19
Referencias citadas42

The quantity of research on Heritage Speakers (HS) of Spanish phonetics has increased over the last decade, including studies on the possible effect of code-switching on Spanish phonetics. Following this line of research, the present study investigates the role of code-switching and lexical stress on Spanish HS vowel production, specifically if the introduction of English reduces the vowel quality and duration of Spanish vowels after a code-switch. Eleven Spanish HSs participated in a controlled narration task in which they were asked to read aloud texts that code-switched between English and Spanish and one text that only contained Spanish. PRAAT was used to segment the vowels and the F1 and F2 values, along with duration, were extracted. The results show that both code-switching and lexical stress significantly affect Spanish HS vowels. Code-switching and vowels in unstressed position were more centralized than the vowels in the monolingual Spanish session and vowels in stressed position, respectively; unstressed vowels were also shorter in duration than stressed vowels. These results show that the introduction of English-a language in which vowel quality and duration change between unstressed and stressed syllables-via code-switching significantly affects Spanish HS vowels, subsequently providing evidence for transient interference

Acoustics · Code (set theory · Code-switching · Duration (music · Formant · Linguistics · Mid vowel · Phonetics · Physics · Quality (philosophy · Set (abstract data type · Speech recognition · Stress (linguistics · Vowel · Computer Science · Language Development and Disorders · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology