The perception of pre-switch cues by Spanish-English bilinguals.
Item
-
Title
-
The perception of pre-switch cues by Spanish-English bilinguals.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9029959
-
identifier
-
9029959
-
Creator
-
Mahecha, Nancy Ruiz.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Loraine K. Obler
-
Date
-
1990
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Health Sciences, Speech Pathology | Language, Linguistics | Education, Educational Psychology | Speech Communication
-
Abstract
-
The purpose of the present research was to determine whether bilingual adults are able to use code-switching cues preceding code-switches to predict the occurrences of code-switches. The potential code-switching cues explored in this study were: prolongation of the last sound before the switch; phonological anticipation (section immediately preceding the code-switch was accented with the phonology of the incoming language); audible hesitation (Spanish filler vowel preceded the code-switch into Spanish and vice versa); and pristine code-switch (no deliberate cue preceded the code-switch). The existence of phonological anticipation, formally introduced by this study, was confirmed spectrographically from naturalistic speech samples. Control unilingual sentences (no cues) were used.;Data were obtained from 54 Spanish-English bilingual adults classified according to degree of language dominance, age of second language acquisition, and amount of exposure to code-switching. Each subject listened to three individual speakers presenting the first clauses of 90 semi-randomized compound sentences, which either contained pre-switch cues, foil pre-switch cues, or no cues (control sentences). The task was to guess whether the sentence would continue in the same language or switch. Both accuracy scores (responses to all sentences) and bias scores (responses to control sentences) were calculated.;The main results of this study indicated that: bilinguals were sensitive to pre-switch cues and similar in their ability to perceive them; some pre-switch cues were more effective than others, possibly related to saliency at the phonetic/phonological level; the perception of pre-switch cues by bilinguals was affected by which language was heard; and language-dominant bilinguals, and bilinguals who acquired their language before or after puberty exhibited a bias towards their unmarked, less fluent language.;The main conclusion of this study is that an adult Spanish-English bilingual is able to perceive pre-switch phonetic/phonological cues, seemingly in accord with context-specific and whole-language markedness effects, by activating a postulated bilingual monitor system. The proposed monitor in turn is free to use the pre-switch cues to predict incoming code-switches thereby facilitating on-line processing of mixed speech. This study complements previous research suggesting that bilinguals process code-switching cues that occur at or immediately following the code-switch boundary.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
