Simultaneous bilingualism and speech style as predictors of variation in allophone production: Evidence from Finland-Swedish

Title
Simultaneous bilingualism and speech style as predictors of variation in allophone production: Evidence from Finland-Swedish
Publication Date
2021-09-24
Author(s)
Strandberg, Janine A E
Gooskens, Charlotte
Schüppert, Anja
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Academic Press
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1016/j.wocn.2021.101095
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/56075
Abstract

This study investigates cross-linguistic transfer in the production of long mid front vowels [øː] and [œː] by simultaneous bilingual Finnish and Finland-Swedish speakers in Finland. In Swedish, the phoneme /ø/ can be realised as the allophones [ø] and [œ], while in Finnish, only [ø] is used. Combining approaches from sociophonetic and bilingual transfer research, the study used acoustic analysis to compare the height and fronting of [øː] and [œː] produced by bilingual and monolingual Finland-Swedish speakers in three different speech styles on a continuum of formality. The data from 115 participants are stratified according to language background, speech style, region, and age. The statistical analysis indicates increased overlap of [øː] and [œː] in the vowel spaces of bilingual speakers, particularly in informal speech. The results suggest a potential effect of Finnish transfer on the distinction of the phonetic variants in simultaneous Finland-Swedish bilinguals, as well as demonstrate the importance of considering speech style in bilingual transfer research.

Link
Citation
Journal of Phonetics, v.88, p. 1-21
ISSN
1095-8576
0095-4470
Start page
1
End page
21
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International

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