The missing link in Spanish heritage trill production

• Autores: Gemma Repiso Puigdelliura, Ji-Young Kim
• Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 24, Nº 3, 2021, págs. 454-466
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • While heritage language phonology has attracted a great deal of attention, little is known about the development of heritage phonological grammars. This study examines the production of the Spanish trill /r/ by school-aged (9-10 years) and adult heritage speakers. Results showed that the adult heritage speakers produced the trill in a more target-like manner than the child heritage speakers, although half of them diverged from non-heritage native baselines reported in other studies. Further analysis of the distribution of trill variants suggests that heritage Spanish trill development occurs in the order of single lingual constriction → frication → multiple lingual constrictions. However, instead of abandoning variants of early stages, some adult heritage speakers kept them in their trill inventories, demonstrating increased variability. Our findings indicate that 9- to 10-year-old heritage speakers are still in the process of developing heritage phonological grammars and even during adulthood their grammars may not reach stability.