Presentation Panel: Sounds
Topics in the Study of Heritage Language Sound Systems
This panel addresses aspects of heritage speakers’ knowledge and use of their heritage language sound system, including questions pertaining to both perception (listening) and production (pronunciation). We begin with a brief overview of central themes and theories in this area of research before proceeding to three empirically-oriented presentations about heritage speakers of Standard Chinese (Mandarin) and Dutch in the United States (see individual abstracts below). Each of the three empirical presentations is allotted a 30-minute slot comprising a 20-minute talk and a 10-minute Q&A for that talk specifically. The panel concludes with a general discussion and open Q&A concerning all the presentations. Thus, the panel is structured as follows:
1:00 – 1:10 pm: Introduction and overview
Charles B. Chang, Ph.D., Boston University / City University of Hong Kong
1:10 – 1:40 pm: Prosodic prominence perception in American heritage speakers of Chinese
B Dowling, University of Wisconsin–Madison
1:40 – 2:10 pm: Stop stability in heritage Dutch
Rachyl Hietpas, University of Wisconsin–Madison
2:10 – 2:40 pm: Modeling variation in heritage language speech production
Charles B. Chang, Ph.D., Boston University / City University of Hong Kong
2:40 – 3:00 pm: General discussion and open Q&A
Prosodic prominence perception in American heritage speakers of Chinese
- B Dowling, University of Wisconsin–Madison
My work seeks to advance linguistic understanding of American heritage speakers of Standard Chinese (SC), especially their perception of word stress. These individuals grow up speaking both SC (a tone language) and English (a stress language), yet they have not been included in discussions surrounding SC word stress. I looked at signal-based, categorical linguistic features and identity-based characteristics of speakers that contribute to prominence perception. The results of a mixed-methods analysis of experiment and interview data show that heritage speakers’ perception of SC word stress is highly variable. For example, while results show participants have more of an iambic (weak-strong) preference, there is strong evidence that this bias to the right is associated with those who both: don’t have a Mandarin dialect family background, and spent more toddler years in China. These findings, among others to be discussed in the presentation, offer a new perspective for the over 60-year debate on the existence or absence of SC word stress, while illustrating the complex interaction between multiple factors pertaining to both stimulus and participant variables.
Stop stability in heritage Dutch
- Rachyl Hietpas, University of Wisconsin–Madison
In my presentation, I will talk about the marked phonological stability of Wisconsin heritage Dutch speakers’ stops. My talk focuses on stop voice onset time (VOT) data from recordings from two time periods (1966 and 2018) of speakers from the same heritage Dutch community in the United States. The data reveal that, while there are some phonetic changes (mainly lengthening of /p,t,k/), 1st generation (adult immigrant) and 4th generation speakers appear to maintain a Dutch-like phonological contrast between their two sets of stops, with the voiced series (/b,d/) remaining consistently prevoiced. 2nd generation speakers, however, display a more marked shift, with their voiced stops no longer being consistently prevoiced in 2018. These results support previous research showing a heritage speaker advantage when it comes to sounds but indicate that especially phonologically unmarked sounds may not be immune to dominant language influence.
Modeling variation in heritage language speech production
- Charles B. Chang, Ph.D., Boston University / City University of Hong Kong
Heritage speakers are known to show a wide range of variation in their production of the heritage language, variation that may be related to individual differences in both dialectal exposure and social dimensions of their upbringing. In this talk, I will present a statistical approach to modeling such multifaceted variation using multiple factor analysis (MFA), focusing on the case of American heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese. First, I will describe the range of phonetic variation and clusters of socio-demographic variation among heritage Mandarin speakers. Second, I will show that some socio-demographic factors (e.g., age of arrival, languages spoken at home) are more predictive of phonetic profiles than others. Overall, the results suggest a significant, if limited, link between socio-demographic factors and production of the heritage language. Crucially, the MFA approach allows us to explore how different aspects of heritage speakers’ two languages (the heritage language and the dominant societal language) may develop in relation to each other, and to connect production variation to socio-demographic factors in a flexible, but principled, way.