The acquisition of a novel accent by monolinguals and early bilinguals: Vowel epenthesis in English voiceless s-clusters

Bilingualism has been linked with improved function regarding certain aspects of linguistic processing, e.g., manipulating language in terms of discrete units, novel word acquisition, and learning unfamiliar sound patterns in novel accents. Recent experimental work with non-native contrasts suggests that bilinguals have enhanced phonetic learning and speech perception abilities compared to monolinguals. We investigate phonetic learning skills in monolinguals (n = 20) and early, simultaneous bilinguals (n = 20). The subjects were trained and tested on an artificial accent of English. One the features distinguishing the novel accent from the standard variety was the presence of vocalic epenthesis in the voiceless s-clusters [sp, st, sk]. For example, words such as “spy” or “school” were pronounced as “suh-py” [səpaj] and “suh-cool” [səkul]. A total of 760 target items were evaluated manually. A score of 1 was assigned for each token produced with an epenthetic vowel between s and the following consonant, otherwise the score was 0. Early bilinguals outperformed the monolinguals on the acquisition of this pattern. Acoustic analyses are underway to assess the differences between the two groups' productions, such as quality, duration, and placement of the epenthetic vowel, as preliminary observations revealed a high number of long-distance phenomena such as [spəhaj] or [spəʔaj].