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Foreign accent in adult simultaneous bilinguals

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Author

  • Tanja Kupisch
  • Dagmar Barton
  • Katja Hailer
  • Ewgenia Klaschik
  • Ilse Stangen
  • Tatjana Lein
  • Joost van de Weijer

Summary, in English

The study reported in this paper examines foreign accent (FA) in adult simultaneous bilinguals (2L1ers). Specifically, we investigate how accent is affected if a first language is acquired as a minority (heritage) language as compared to a majority (dominant) language. We compare the perceived FA in both languages of 38 adult 2L1ers (German-French and German-Italian) to that of monolingual native speakers (L1ers) and late second language learners (L2ers). Naturalistic speech samples are judged by 84 native speakers of the respective languages. Results indicate that the majority language is always spoken without an FA, while results for the heritage language fall between those of L1 and L2 speakers. For the heritage language, we further show that a native accent correlates with length of residence in the heritage country during childhood but not during adulthood. Furthermore, raters have comparatively more difficulties when judging the accent of a heritage speaker. The results of this study add to our current understanding of what factors shape the phonology of a heritage language system in adulthood.

Publishing year

2015

Language

English

Pages

123-150

Publication/Series

Heritage Language Journal

Volume

11

Issue

2

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Language Resource Center of UCLA and the UC Consortium for Language Learning and Teaching

Topic

  • General Language Studies and Linguistics

Keywords

  • foreign accents
  • sequential bilinguals
  • critical period hypothesis

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1550-7076