36.87, Diss: German (deu); Spanish (spa); Phonetics: Mario Ruiz Moreno: "Phonetic production in early and late German-Spanish bilinguals"

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-87. Sat Jan 11 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.87, Diss: German (deu); Spanish (spa); Phonetics: Mario Ruiz Moreno: "Phonetic production in early and late German-Spanish bilinguals"

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Date: 11-Jan-2025
From: Mario Ruiz Moreno [mario.ruizm at urjc.es]
Subject: Phonetic production in early and late German-Spanish bilinguals


Institution: Hamburg University (Germany): PhD in Romance Linguistics
Degree Date: 2019

Dissertation Title: Phonetic production in early and late
German-Spanish bilinguals

Dissertation URL:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343979394_Phonetic_production_in_early_and_late_German-Spanish_bilinguals

Subject Language(s): German (deu)
                     German (deu)

Dissertation Director(s): Prof. Dr. Christopher Gabriel

Dissertation Abstract:

The aim of this study was the investigate both the acoustic
differences and the global accent ratings of
different types of bilinguals. The 40 speakers who participated in the
study were divided into five groups
(8 members per group). There were two groups of monolinguals (Spanish
and German), one group of
L1 Spanish – L2 German proficient late bilinguals, and two groups or
early bilinguals (most of them
also simultaneous bilinguals). For one group of the early bilinguals,
Spanish was the societal language
during childhood and German the heritage language, whereas the other
group was brought up in
Germany and acquired Spanish at home.
The study combines the use of global accent ratings, as typically done
in bilingualism studies (e.g. Flege
et al., 1995; or Oyama, 1976), with linguistic (acoustic) analyses, as
proposed in Abrahamsson &
Hyltenstam (2009). The acoustic studies focus on segmental phonetics,
namely different aspects of
vowels, stops, fricatives, and rhotics were investigated, which cover
more than 75% of the segments of
each language. Lastly, the study evaluated the impact of each of these
phonetic features in the global
accent ratings.
The findings support the idea that early exposure to a language does
not guarantee a native-like
pronunciation (Abrahamsson & Hyltenstam, 2009), as only half of the
early bilinguals passed for
natives in their heritage language despite presenting few phonetic
deviations from monolingual norm.
On the contrary, all of them passed for natives in their societal
language. In turn, the late bilinguals
were very far from monolinguals in the global accent ratings and, to a
lesser extent, in the acoustic
studies. The evaluation of the impact of each phonetic feature on
global accent ratings seemingly
suggests that other aspects (most likely intonation) can better
account for global accent ratings when
the speakers evaluated are highly proficient.
Keywords: early bilinguals, late bilinguals, simultaneous bilinguals,
heritage-language speakers,
Spanish, German, vowels, stops, fricatives, rhotics, and global
accent.
Thesis awarded with the Werner-Kraus prize by the German Association
of Hispanists.
http://hispanistica.de/werner-krauss-preis/preistraegerinnen-2021/



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