Exploring Cross-linguistic Effects and Phonetic Interactions in the Context of Bilingualism

Dear Colleagues,

The goal of this Special Issue is to bring together state-of-the-art papers that examine cross-linguistic effects and phonetic interactions in the context of bilingualism. Many studies have shown that early learners outperform late learners in various production and perception tasks (Baker and Trofimovich, 2005; Darcy and Krüger, 2012; Flege et al., 1999), and specifically that early bilinguals produce and perceive L1 and L2 sounds free of interlingual interference (Guion et al., 2004; Mack, 1989; Piske et al., 2002), suggesting that early exposure helps to develop and maintain independent or separate phonetic systems. However, a number of studies also suggest that these bilinguals’ combined or interrelated systems influence each other at a fine-grained acoustic level (Flege et al., 1995; Fowler et al., 2008), and early and extensive exposure to a second language may not be sufficient to attain target-like phonetic abilities in the language (Bosch et al., 2000; Pallier et al., 1997; Sebastián-Gallés and Soto-Faraco, 1999; Sebastián-Gallés et al., 2005). In order to better understand the phonological/phonetic systems of early and late bilinguals, it is clear that we are obligated to consider many variables in addition to age of acquisition, such as language proficiency, language dominance, language use and other non-linguistic variables that are particular to the experiences of the bilingual community under investigation. For this Special Issue, we welcome papers that address cross-linguistic influence in bilingual speech production, perception, and processing, that use a wide variety of methodologies and that inform current theoretical frameworks on bilingual speech.

References

Baker, W., & Trofimovich, P. (2005). Interaction of native- and second-language vowel system(s) in early and late bilinguals. Language and Speech, 48, 1-27.

Darcy, I., & Krüger, F. (2012). Vowel perception and production in Turkish children acquiring L2 German. Journal of Phonetics, 40(4), 568-581.

Flege, J. E., MacKay, I. R., & Meador, D. (1999b). Native Italian speakers’ perception and production of English vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106(5), 2973-2987.

Guion, S. G., Harada, T., & Clark, J. J. (2004). Early and late Spanish–English bilinguals' acquisition of English word stress patterns. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7(3), 207-226.

Mack, M. (1989). Consonant and vowel perception and production: Early English-French bilinguals and English monolinguals. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 46(2), 187-200.

Piske, T., Flege, J. E., MacKay, I. R., & Meador, D. (2002). The production of English vowels by fluent early and late Italian-English bilinguals. Phonetica, 59(1), 49-71.

Flege, J. E., Munro, M. J., & MacKay, I. R. (1995). Factors affecting strength of perceived foreign accent in a second language. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97(5), 3125-3134.

Flege, J. E., Yeni-Komshian, G. H., & Liu, S. (1999). Age constraints on second-language acquisition. Journal of memory and language, 41(1), 78-104.

Fowler, C.A., Sramko, V., Ostry, D.J., Rowland, S.A., & Hallé, P. (2008). Cross language phonetic influences on the speech of French-English bilinguals. Journal of Phonetics, 36(4), 649-663.

Bosch, L., Costa, A., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2000). First and second language vowel perception in early bilinguals. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 12(2), 189-221.

Pallier, C., Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). A limit on behavioral plasticity in speech perception. Cognition, 64(3), B9-B17.

Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Soto-Faraco, S. (1999). Online processing of native and non-native phonemic contrasts in early bilinguals. Cognition, 72(2), 111-123.

Sebastián-Gallés, N., Echeverría, S., & Bosch, L. (2005). The influence of initial exposure on lexical representation: Comparing early and simultaneous bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 52(2), 240-255.

Dr. Mark Amengual
Guest Editor

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• bilingualism
• acoustic phonetics
• speech perception
• speech processing
• bilingual phonological representations
• language dominance
• language use
• language proficiency
• cross-linguistic influence
• language contact
• heritage languages
• minority languages