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3 results

  • Heritage speakers’ perception of heritage speech: prosody contributes to heritage accent more than segments do

  • Joo Kyeong Kim, Ji Young Kim, John Carter, Jenny Eonsuh Choi
  • Journal:
    Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , First View
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    15 July 2025, pp. 1-13
    • Article
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  • This study investigates heritage speakers (HSs) of Spanish in the U.S. and potential areas of divergence in speech from homeland speakers. To examine the relative contribution of prosody and segments in perceived heritage accent, we conducted an accent rating task with speech samples of second language learners (L2s), HSs and homeland speakers presented in three conditions: original, prosody-only and segments-only. The stimuli were rated by two groups: HSs and homeland speakers. The results revealed that HSs and homeland speakers had similar global accent perceptions, rating HSs as more native-like than L2s but less native-like than homeland speakers. We found that both rater groups aligned with a dominant language ideology of Spanish; speakers who were judged as more native-like were perceived as residing in a Spanish-speaking country. Our findings also demonstrate that prosody contributes more to perceived heritage accent than segments, while segments contribute more to L2 foreign accent than prosody.

  • 25 - The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Language Speakers

  • from Part V - The Diversity of Bilingual Speakers
  • Edited by Mark Amengual, University of California, Santa Cruz
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Phonetics and Phonology
    Published online:
    14 November 2024
    Print publication:
    21 November 2024, pp 560-583

  • Summary

    Heritage language speakers, or heritage speakers in short, are early sequential or simultaneous bilinguals whose home language, generally a diasporic or an indigenous language, differs from the majority language of the society. The goal of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive background of heritage speakers and their sound systems. It includes a literature review on the phonetics and phonology across heritage languages, particularly those of children of immigrants, in various majority language contexts. The chapter first describes heritage speakers and the general characteristics of their language learning experiences and outcomes. It then reviews studies examining heritage speakers’ global accent and factors contributing to perceived heritage accent. It also presents areas of divergence that have been found in the production and perception of heritage language segments and prosody. Lastly, the chapter synthesizes the findings, discussing common patterns observed in heritage language phonetics and phonology, and suggests areas for future research.

  • 2 - Phonetic Influence from the Minority Language

  • Edited by Rajiv Rao, University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Book:
    The Phonetics and Phonology of Heritage Languages
    Published online:
    15 February 2024
    Print publication:
    22 February 2024, pp 43-62

  • Summary

    American Israelis are an understudied but regionally important population in Israel, who use American English as a heritage language. Most heritage language situations previously studied investigate low-status heritage languages rather than high-status heritage languages which function as languages of wider communication. Does the majority language (i.e., Modern Hebrew) influence the minority language (i.e., American English) in this unusual case, as predicted by previous research? This question is investigated through a picture-naming task comparing the speech acoustics of stop production in American English heritage speakers, American olim (i.e., immigrants), and native Hebrew speakers. Results reveal a heritage accent in Modern Hebrew rather than American English, with crosslinguistic influence from the minority language to the majority language. This unexpected result is explained using Flege and Bohn (2021)’s Revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r), which argues that phones in a bilingual’s phonetic system are linked, allowing for, and even predicting, this type of crosslinguistic influence.