Ghosts in the bilingual machine: Consonant cluster production in Spanish and English bilinguals

Grant M. BerryThe Pennsylvania State University

CASPSLaP 2014

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Difficult Names…

• Christopher Nwankwo Chukwuma• Senator, Nigeria

• hridôe (হৃদয)• Bengali, heart

• Quvenzhané Wallis• Actress, Beasts of the Southern Wild

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Global Differences in CC Production• When speakers encounter new words with unfamiliar consonant

clusters, they are likely to:• Epenthesize or use Anaptyxis (considered equivalent here)

(Altenberg 2005, Eddington 2001, Fleischhacker 2000, Rose and Demuth 2006, Ramírez 2006)

• Delete a member of the cluster (Jabbari and Samarvachi 2011, Chang 2008, Bonet 2006)

• Resyllabify the cluster with a nuclear sonorant (Zec 1995: 88)

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mbatə

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Some Strategies in Action:

Epenthesis

æ b ɪ n

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Some Strategies in Action:

Resyllabification

b

m

æ t

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Some Strategies in Action:

Deletion

b ʌ k

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Global Differences in CC Production

• Strategies like these frequently occur with: • heterorganic clusters (Byrd and Tan 1996)

• violations in sonority sequencing (Zec 1995, Sherwin 1999, Sing 1985)

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Sherwin 1999:56

Onset Nucleus Coda

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Phonotactics in Spanish and English• The strategies used are constrained by the phonotactic systems of the

speakers in question:

• Spanish• Simple syllable structure• Few clusters permitted; many contain a liquid (pl, bl, br, pr, kr, etc.)• Coda clusters are rare

• English• Allows a wide variety of onset and coda clusters

• (sixths=[sɪksθs])• Permits liquids and nasals as syllabic nuclei (as well as other sonorants)

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Language-specific differences in Strategy• Consequently, the strategies frequently used by speakers of these

languages are:

• Spanish• Preference for deletion of one member of the cluster (Bonet 2006)

• English• Preference for resyllabification with a liquid or nasal

• Both• Anaptyxis (the insertion of a small ghost vowel) is a common cross-linguistic

strategy which may be produced by gestural mistiming or misalignment (cf. Byrd and Tan 1996, Hall 2006) • This is reflected through lower vowel durations for ghost vowels compared to full vowels

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Previous Research

• Most research has focused on monolingual speakers, and assumed that a given language’s phonotactics govern strategy use

• However, comparatively little work has looked at bilingual production of consonant clusters

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Research Questions

• When one has experience with two phonotactic systems, which system’s preferred pattern predominates in consonant cluster production?• How does experience modulate the choice of strategy for consonant

cluster resolution?• Do late bilinguals and early bilinguals show similar or distinct strategy

patterns?

• Do anaptyctic vowels, which are cross-linguistically common, demonstrate evidence of gestural preparation?• Do they share characteristics with nuclear vowels in their respective words?

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Participants (10)

• English monolinguals (3)• No significant experience with other languages• Functionally monolingual

• Late English-Spanish bilinguals (2)• Age of exposure to Spanish: 13 and 14 years• Spanish Speaking Proficiency: 9 Reading: 8

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Participants (10)

• Late Spanish-English bilinguals (2)• Mean age of exposure to English: 13 years• Mean English Speaking Rating: 5.5 Reading: 9

• Early Spanish-English bilinguals (3)• Mean age of exposure to English: 1.6 years• Mean English Speaking Rating: 8 Reading: 8.7

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Experimental Stimuli

• 219 Experimental Stimuli• 108 Targets

• 18 sC clusters• 63 onset clusters, 45 coda clusters• Targets were constructed to violate sonority sequencing, or to have heterorganic clusters

• 111 controls (mixture of monosyllabic and bisyllabic words)

• Construction of stimuli was mostly algorithmic• Onset Cluster: Cluster group + {a, i, u}+Consonant• Coda Cluster: Consonant +{a, i, u}+Cluster group

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sC Cluster:

skagOnset Cluster:

fnarCoda Cluster:

eebnControl:

fana

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Coding• Coding Predictors:• Strategy: Deletion, Epenthesis/Anaptyxis, Syllabic Nasal/Liquid, None, Other• Stimulus Position• Speaker group and participant number• Permissibility in English, Both, or Neither

• Analysis:• Data were analyzed in R (R Core Team, 2013)

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Vowel Spaces and Ghost ProductionBy Group

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Vowels were plotted with the phonR package using F1 and F2 values (McCloy 2013)

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English Monolinguals English-Spanish Late Bilinguals

Early Spanish-English Bilinguals Late Spanish-English Bilinguals

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English Monolinguals English-Spanish Late Bilinguals

Early Spanish-English Bilinguals Late Spanish-English Bilinguals

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Vowel Length Density by Group

The ghost vowel (anaptyxis) is

consistently shortest cross-linguistically, in line with a gestural misalignment claim

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F1 DevianceGhost F1-Main F1

Negative value implies that the

ghost vowel is higher than the main vowel

In general, we see a trend toward

centralization of the anaptyctic

vowel

This seems to be independent of

the stimulus position

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F2 DevianceGhost F2-Main F2

Negative implies that the ghost vowel is more backed than

the main vowel

In general, we see a trend toward

centralization of the anaptyctic

vowel

However, æ behaves differently for coda and onset

targets. Why?

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F1 and F2 deviances as functions of Euclidean distance

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Factors Contributing to Overall Deviance• To determine how F2 and F1 deviance related to overall Euclidean

distance from the target vowel, an ANOVA was run on the square of the Euclidean Distance with the squares of F1 and F2 deviance as predictors, as well as the target vowel, cluster position, and speaker• Results:• F1 square deviance highly significant (p<.001)• F2 square deviance highly significant (p<.001)• Target Vowel significant (p<.02)

• /e/, /u/ and /i/ were the largest contributors to the effect• No significance for participant or cluster position

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Ghost Vowel Summary• Ghost vowels are consistently much shorter than other vowels,

suggesting they result from gestural misalignment rather than full vowel insertion• Anaptyctic Vowels are usually centralized relative to target vowels,

independent of whether the language has phonological vowel reduction in unstressed syllables• This is true regardless of cluster position

• Both F1 and F2 deviance from the main vowel are strong predictors of total distance (perhaps unsurprisingly), as well as main vowel• /i/, /u/, and /e/ are driving this effect

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CC Resolution StrategiesOnly done on targets, because strategies are not expected to emerge with controls

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Strategy by Group(Targets only)

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Deletion Epenthesis Other ResyllabifiedLiquid/Nasal

None

ENGLATE

Deletion is highest for late Spanish-English bilinguals

Resyllabification is also lowest for this group

English late bilinguals do not adapt deletion as a repair strategy

They do, however, lower usage of resyllabification in favor of the cross-linguistic strategy of epenthesis

Early Spanish-English bilinguals fall between English monolinguals and late English-Spanish bilinguals in terms of strategy usage

They pattern more with monolinguals than English-Spanish late bilinguals

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Strategy By Participant(Targets only)

Participant

Individual differences are

apparent, but in general follow similar trends within groups

Spanish Early Spanish-English Late

English Monolingual English-Spanish Late

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Strategy Count Summary

• English monolinguals are the highest users of resyllabified sonorants, and Spanish-English late bilinguals are the highest users of deletion

• Early Spanish-English bilinguals consistently fall in between English monolinguals and English-Spanish late bilinguals wrt strategy

• Individual differences currently abound, but they seem to be patterning similarly within groups• Larger n will most likely wash this out at the group level

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Statistical AnalysisMultinomial Logistic Regression

Multinomial logistic regressions were calculated using the nnet package in R (Venables 2002)

Speaker Group Position

English Monolingual

English-Spanish

Late Bilingua

lSpanish-

English Late Bilingual

Early Spanish-English

Bilingual

Deletion

Epenthesis

Resyllabification None

OnsetCoda

Strategy

English

Neither

Permissibility

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Multinomial Logistic Regression

• Run only on target items to predict repair strategy• Intercept: Spanish-English early bilingual, coda cluster permissible in

English and Spanish with no apparent strategy• Run in R (R Core Team, 2013) with the multinom() function in nnet package• Dependent Variables: • Speaker Group• Cluster Position (onset or coda)• Permissibility

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Type 2 ANOVA on Model

• All 3 predictors highly significant (p<.0001)• In order of decreasing Chi-square value:• Permissibility

• Non-permissibility in both languages significantly increases the chance of a strategy emerging

• Speaker Group• Not all speaker groups behaved identically with respect to resolution strategy

• Cluster Position• Coda clusters were more likely to produce a strategy than onset clusters

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Model Summary:

• Onset Clusters are less likely to produce a strategy than coda clusters• Impermissibility in both Spanish and English increases the probability that a

strategy will emerge, but the opposite is true for English-permissible clusters• Early bilinguals behave similarly to English monolinguals wrt most strategies

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(Intercept)Late

Spanish-English English

MonolingualLate

English-SpanishEnglish-

permissibleNot permissible

in Eng/Span Onset ClusterDeletion -2.1 2.6 -0.7 -14.6 -14.7 3.5 -3.0

Epenthesis 0.6 0.3 -0.8 0.4 0.0 3.0 -2.2Other -1.3 1.1 -0.9 -0.7 0.5 2.8 -1.7

Resyllabified -1.3 0.2 -0.5 -0.3 -12.8 3.7 -2.8

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Discussion• Though there are global tendencies for speakers of a given language to

adopt a certain repair strategy for illicit clusters, these tendencies seem to shift with additional experience in a foreign language• New strategies can develop with increased proficiency in a foreign language

• Early bilinguals, with the highest amount of experience in both languages, effectively demonstrate a hybrid phonotactic system with access to strategies common to both languages• They consistently appear between English monolinguals and late English-Spanish

bilinguals in terms of strategy use

• Ghosts vowels, when produced, demonstrate some degree of centralization reflected in changes in both F1 and F2.• This effect is modulated by vowel, with high vowels showing the greatest change in

position between ghost vowel and target (possibly due to potential outliers)

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THANK YOU to:

• Professors/colleagues:• Marianna Nadeu• John Lipski• Matthew Carlson• Members of PHON (Phonetics/Phonology Reading Group at Penn State)

• phonpsu.blogspot.com

• Other members of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at Penn State• Members of the Judith Kroll’s Purple Lab and Giuli Dussias’s ISÍ lab

• Research assistants:• Hope Schmid• SeonGu Lee

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