Simonet Miquel
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
Phonetica. 2011;68(1-2):88-110. doi: 10.1159/000328847. Epub 2011 Jul 21.
The present study investigates the acoustics (F1 × F2) of Catalan and Spanish mid-back vowels as produced by highly proficient, early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals residing on the island of Majorca, a bilingual speech community. Majorcan Catalan has two phonemic mid-back vowels in stressed positions (/o/ and /c/) while Spanish possesses only one (/o/). Two groups of bilinguals were recruited and asked to produce materials in both languages - one group of Spanish dominant and one of Catalan-dominant speakers. It was first found that Catalan and Spanish /o/ are virtually indistinguishable. Catalan /c/ is lower and more fronted than the other two vowels. Spanish-dominant bilinguals were found to differ from Catalan-dominant ones in that they did not produce the Catalan-specific /o/-/c/ contrast in their speech; that is, they produced a single, merged Catalan mid-back vowel. A within-subjects analysis of first- and second-language mid-back vowels further suggested, for Spanish-dominant bilinguals, that they had developed a separate vowel category to accommodate their single, merged Catalan mid-back vowel; that is, they possessed a two-category mid-back vowel system, i.e. one for their Spanish /o/ and one for their merged Catalan /o/ + /c/. Potential explanations and theoretical implications are discussed.
本研究调查了居住在马略卡岛（一个双语社区）的高度熟练的早期西班牙语 - 加泰罗尼亚语双语者所发出的加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语中后元音的声学特征（F1×F2）。马略卡岛的加泰罗尼亚语在重读音节中有两个音位中后元音（/o/和/c/），而西班牙语只有一个（/o/）。招募了两组双语者，并要求他们用两种语言生成材料——一组是西班牙语占主导的，另一组是加泰罗尼亚语占主导的。首先发现，加泰罗尼亚语和西班牙语的/o/几乎无法区分。加泰罗尼亚语的/c/比其他两个元音更低且更靠前。研究发现，西班牙语占主导的双语者与加泰罗尼亚语占主导的双语者的不同之处在于，他们在言语中没有产生加泰罗尼亚语特有的/o/-/c/对比；也就是说，他们发出的是一个单一的、合并的加泰罗尼亚语中后元音。对第一语言和第二语言中后元音的受试者内分析进一步表明，对于西班牙语占主导的双语者来说，他们已经形成了一个单独的元音类别来容纳他们单一的、合并的加泰罗尼亚语中后元音；也就是说，他们拥有一个两类中后元音系统，即一个用于他们的西班牙语/o/，另一个用于他们合并的加泰罗尼亚语/o/+/c/。文中讨论了潜在的解释和理论意义。
