Accessing Cross Language Categories in Learning a Third Language

Page Piccinini (Department of Linguistics, UCSD)

Current theories differ on how bilinguals organize their two languages, including their sound systems. The debate centers on whether bilinguals have constant access to both systems (Green, 1998; c.f. Johnson, 1997; Pierrehumbert, 2002) or to one system at a time (Cutler et al., 1992; Macnamara & Kushnir, 1971). This study examines these theories by testing the ability of early Spanish-English bilinguals to access distinctions within the voice onset time (VOT) continuum when learning a third language that uses VOT categories from both Spanish and English. Participants were tested on Eastern Armenian that has a three-way VOT contrast: negative, short-lag and long-lag VOT (cf. English which largely distinguishes short-lag from long-lag VOT and Spanish which contrasts negative and short-lag VOT). Participants were tested first with a production task followed by either an AX discrimination task or an ABX discrimination task. Of those who participated in the AX task half of participants received instructions in English and half received instructions in Spanish; of those who participated in the ABX task all received instructions in Spanish. Language dominance was also assessed via a questionnaire to see how being dominant in one language over another could affect production and perception of the three-way contrast. For the production experiment there was a significant difference in VOT durations between all three VOT categories. However there was a significant interaction with language dominance, whereby only balanced bilinguals could reliably produce the negative VOT category as compared to English dominant bilinguals. There was no effect of language of instruction. For the AX discrimination task participants were significantly above chance for discriminating negative VOT from long-lag VOT, significantly below chance at discriminating negative VOT from short-lag VOT, and at chance at discriminating short-lag VOT from long-lag VOT. There was no significant effect of either language of instruction or language dominance. Preliminary results from the ABX discrimination task suggest bilinguals can accurately discriminate all three contrasts. There was a marginally significant effect of language dominance with balanced bilinguals doing better at negative VOT compared to short-lag VOT than English dominant bilinguals. These results suggest that in production early Spanish-English bilinguals can reliably produce the three-way contrast, but only if they are balanced in both languages. In perception early Spanish-English bilinguals are able to discriminate the three-way contrast, as shown by the ABX discrimination task, especially if they are more balanced. However early Spanish-English bilinguals, both balanced and English dominant, have a preference for languages to only have a two-way contrast, as shown by the AX discrimination task. Overall these results support a theory whereby bilinguals have access to sounds from both of their languages at once, particularly if they are balanced bilinguals.

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Accessing Cross Language Categories in Learning a Third Language
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