Perception of American-English Vowels by Early and Late Spanish-English Bilinguals.
Miriam Baigorri, Luca Campanelli, Erika S Levy
PMID 30354920WHAT IT FOUND
Early Spanish-English bilinguals discriminated American-English vowels better than late learners but still scored below native speakers.
Late learners rated American vowels as more similar to Spanish vowels. Specific contrasts like /ʌ-æ/ were hardest for everyone, suggesting targets for perceptual training.
Key findings
01Native monolinguals had the highest discrimination accuracy (97%), followed by early bilinguals (80%) and late bilinguals (66%).
02Late bilinguals gave higher goodness ratings to American-English vowels, perceiving them as more similar to their native Spanish vowels than early bilinguals did.
03Contrasts involving /ʌ/ and /æ/ or /ɑ/ were discriminated poorly by all groups, while contrasts with distinct native categories were easier.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Small sample size (12 participants per bilingual group). Stimuli were produced by only three female talkers from the New York area, limiting generalizability to other dialects or male voices. Vowels were presented in only one consonantal context (bilabial), which may not reflect how vowels are perceived in other contexts. Participants had diverse language backgrounds and lengths of residence, which were not controlled for in the analysis. The study did not include children, so findings may not apply to pediatric populations.
Declared interests
The authors did not report any conflicts of interest or funding sources in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that early bilinguals perceive American-English vowels exactly like native speakers. Although they performed better than late learners, their discrimination accuracy (80%) was significantly lower than that of monolinguals (97%).