Second-Language Acquisition and First-Language Attrition of Speech: The Production of Arabic and English Short Vowels.
Lisa Kornder, Amirah Saud Alharbi, Anouschka Foltz
PMID 40785265WHAT IT FOUND
Bilingual speakers did not simply lose native vowels as they acquired second-language vowels.
Some vowels were produced like monolingual speech, some were not, and a sound-discrimination test did not predict accuracy.
Key findings
01For /a-æ/, the bilingual groups did not differ from monolinguals, indicating nativelike productions in both languages and no first-language attrition; in the sentence condition, closer second-language tongue-height accuracy was related to closer first-language tongue-height accuracy.
02For /ɪ/, both bilingual groups produced Arabic /ɪ/ with a higher tongue position than monolinguals, while English /ɪ/ was closer to monolingual norms.
03For /u-ʊ/, English-Arabic bilinguals produced Arabic /u/ outside the monolingual norm, while Arabic-English bilinguals produced both languages like monolinguals.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study included only 15 participants in each group. The two bilingual groups differed significantly in age at arrival and length of residence. The speech sample was a formal reading task, not spontaneous conversation, and the paper notes attrition may be more visible in casual speech. The study measured production but did not test perception of the Arabic or English vowels. Sound-discrimination aptitude was tested in Cantonese, not in the languages being studied. It measured participants once, so it cannot show how vowel production changes over time. The findings cover only three vowels in two language pairs.
Declared interests
The second author received a scholarship from Umm Al-Qura University. The authors also acknowledged financial support from the University of Graz.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that bilinguals inevitably lose native-language vowels as they acquire second-language vowels. In this study the relationship varied by vowel: some bilinguals produced vowels like monolinguals, while others showed vowel-specific differences, and sound-discrimination aptitude did not predict nativelike production.
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