Acoustic Correlates of the Spanish Tap-Trill Contrast: Heritage and L2 Spanish Speakers

Abstract

The present study investigates the acoustic correlates of the Spanish tap-trill phonological contrast (/ɾ/-/r/) in the production of 40 Spanish heritage speakers and 20 L2 Spanish learners in Northern California. The acoustic analyses examined the number of occlusions and overall duration in the production of phonemic trills, while the phonetic variants of the phonemic tap were based on the degree of apical constriction: true tap, approximant tap, and perceptual tap. The results from a reading-aloud task indicate that most speakers produced non-canonical phonemic trills with one or zero occlusions and maintain the Spanish tap-trill phonological contrast largely by means of segmental duration, and that this is especially true for L2 learners and English-dominant heritage speakers. In contrast, Spanish-dominant heritage speakers produced the majority of their trills with two or three brief occlusions between the tongue apex and the alveolar ridge. These data confirm that heritage speakers are a heterogeneous group and that variance in their rhotic production is a result of language dominance: English-dominant heritage speakers and L2 learners are most likely to exhibit a modified system to maintain the rhotic phonological contrast in comparison to Spanish-dominant heritage speakers. The findings of this study add to our understanding of the sources of variation in heritage and L2 pronunciation by investigating a largely understudied bilingual population that has traditionally been ignored in bilingual phonetic research.