Doctoral Dissertation Research: An experimental approach to phonetic transfer in the production and perception of early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals

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This dissertation project examines the influence of one language on the other in bilinguals who learn both languages from a very young age and who continue to use both languages extensively within a bilingual community. Previous research has suggested that the dominant language interferes with the acquisition of the phonetics of the other language even when bilinguals have the most favorable conditions to learn both, which is the case of Spanish and Catalan speakers on the island of Majorca (Spain). The hypothesis of this study is that bilinguals are able to perceive the vowels in Catalan that do not exist in Spanish and that they are also able to produce them accurately but that previously unexamined factors, including whether the words are shared between two languages (cognates), and a speaker's language dominance, use, age and attitudes about language, also play a role in how accurately they perceive and produce vowels in certain words. 40 Spanish- and 40 Catalan-dominant bilinguals will participate in three experiments. The first, will investigate the production of the Catalan and Spanish target vowels. The second experiment will test their perception of these vowels. Finally, the third experiment will test whether they know which vowel is correct in a particular word. If these speakers perform these tasks accurately it would refute the claim that the dominant language interferes with the acquisition of the other language.The present study will inform methodologies in the study of bilingualism, not only in phonetics, but also in the domains of psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and language contact, providing a clearer picture of production and perception patterns at the level of the word and at the individual sound level. This award will support the scientific training of a promising scholar.