Acoustic Analysis of English Vowels by Young Spanish-English Bilingual Language Learners

Several studies across various languages have shown that monolingual listeners perceivesignificant differences between the speech of monolinguals and bilinguals. However,these differences may not always affect the phoneme category as identified by the listener orthe speaker; differences may often be found between tokens corresponding to uniquephonological categories and, as such, be more easily detectable through acoustic analysis. Wehypothesized that unshared English vowels produced by young Spanish-English bilinguals wouldhave measurably different formant values and duration than the same vowels produced by youngEnglish monolinguals because of Spanish influence on English phonology. We did not findsignificant differences in formant values between the two groups, but we found that SpanishEnglish bilinguals produced certain vowels with longer duration than English monolinguals. Ourfindings add to the ever-growing body of literature on bilingual language acquisition and theperception of accentedness.

Author

• Srinivasan, Nandini

Language

• en

Keyword

• acoustic analysis
• bilingual language acquisition
• vowel space

Date created

• 2018

Type of Work

• Master's Thesis

License

• All rights reserved

Rights statement

• In Copyright

GW Unit

• Speech-Language Pathology

Degree

• M.A.

Advisor

• Core, Cynthia

Committee Member(s)

• Brundage, Shelley
• Rose, Yvan

Persistent URL

•  https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/etd/cr56n126v