Dark and clear laterals in Catalan and Spanish: Interaction of phonetic categories in early bilinguals

The present study reports on an acoustic analysis of alveolar laterals in two contact languages (Catalan and Spanish) as produced by two groups of Catalan–Spanish bilinguals (Catalan-dominant and Spanish-dominant) residing on Majorca. Catalan alveolar laterals have been reported to be “darker” (i.e. velarized) than Spanish ones. Recent sociophonetic research has suggested that Catalan and Spanish are gradually converging in this phonetic feature due to intensive contact and that laterals are sociolinguistically salient in Majorca. This paper examines the potential interactions between the social-indexical role of laterals in Majorca and the abilities of bilinguals to maintain two separate acoustic distributions for laterals in their two languages. First, it is shown that bilinguals tend to transfer the phonetic features of the sound categories of their native language to their non-native one even after having had early and extensive exposure to native input in their non-dominant language. Second, it is shown that while most bilinguals maintain two separate acoustic distributions for the laterals in their two languages, some participants do not. Social-indexical and cognitive factors that could explain this finding are discussed.

Research Highlights
► Early bilinguals transfer the acoustics of laterals from their dominant to their non-dominant language and thus differ from native speakers of their non-dominant language.
► Early bilinguals develop new phonetic categories for sounds of their non-dominant language.
► Social-indexical constraints affect speech behavior and learning in bilinguals.