Leiden University Student Repository

Reitsema, Ariëlle (2023)

Plosive Voicing in Heritage Afrikaans: VOT and f0 as Cues to the Plosive Voicing Contrast in Afrikaans-Dutch Early Bilinguals' Speech

Bachelor thesis | Taalwetenschap (BA)

This study documented the realisation of the plosive voicing contrast in terms of VOT and post-plosive f0 in the Afrikaans and Dutch of early bilingual Afrikaans heritage speakers in the Netherlands. In partial replication of Coetzee et al. (2018)’s documentation of the contrast in Afrikaans, where f0 is an increasingly more important cue than VOT, this study found effects of the homeland cue reweighting in heritage speakers’ productions. They were more likely to produce phonologically voiced plosives without prevoicing in Afrikaans than in Dutch, but showed large and systematic f0 differences between the two categories in both languages. Their realisations resembled those of older speakers in the homeland most, pointing to slower spread of language innovations to the heritage language community. Findings also suggest that the representations of similar but distinct phonological contrasts in early bilingual speakers’ different phoneme inventories are distinct, but influence each...Show moreThis study documented the realisation of the plosive voicing contrast in terms of VOT and post-plosive f0 in the Afrikaans and Dutch of early bilingual Afrikaans heritage speakers in the Netherlands. In partial replication of Coetzee et al. (2018)’s documentation of the contrast in Afrikaans, where f0 is an increasingly more important cue than VOT, this study found effects of the homeland cue reweighting in heritage speakers’ productions. They were more likely to produce phonologically voiced plosives without prevoicing in Afrikaans than in Dutch, but showed large and systematic f0 differences between the two categories in both languages. Their realisations resembled those of older speakers in the homeland most, pointing to slower spread of language innovations to the heritage language community. Findings also suggest that the representations of similar but distinct phonological contrasts in early bilingual speakers’ different phoneme inventories are distinct, but influence each other and may overlap partially.Show less

Plosive voicing contrast, cue reweighting, heritage language, bilingual pronunciation, innovation spread

Author

Reitsema, Ariëlle

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language & Cognition

Supervisors

Prof.dr. Y. Chen

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en