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Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 14:3 (2024) ► pp.370–399

Bilinguals produce language-specific voice onset time in two true-voicing languages

The case of Basque-Spanish early bilinguals

ORCID logo | BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language | Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea UPV/EHU
ORCID logo | BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language | Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science
ORCID logo | BCBL, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language

It is well established that early bilinguals who speak languages that differ in the phonetic implementation of the voicing contrast have language-specific voicing systems. This study investigates voicing separation in bilinguals who speak two true-voicing languages, Basque and Spanish. We also describe the voicing system in Gipuzkoan Spanish and Gipuzkoan Basque, which is the closest dialect to Standard Basque and it has not yet been investigated experimentally. Twenty Basque-Spanish early bilingual speakers of Gipuzkoan dialects participated in two picture naming tasks. We described their voicing system by measuring voice onset time (VOT) in both Gipuzkoan Basque and Spanish, and used linear mixed-effects models to investigate between-language production differences. Our results show for the first time that adult early bilinguals who speak two true-voicing languages produce language-specific VOT in ‘voiced’ plosives. This finding demonstrates that bilinguals’ phonetic systems during production are more fine-grained than previously assumed, and contributes to a deeper understanding of granularity in early bilingual phonetic systems.

Keywords: voice onset time production, language-specific production categories, early bilinguals, Basque-Spanish bilinguals, picture naming task
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1VOT production in bilinguals
    • 1.2VOT in Spanish and Basque
    • 1.3The current study
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and design
    • 2.3Procedure and apparatus
    • 2.4VOT measurements
    • 2.5Data analyses and model description
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1The voicing system of Gipuzkoan Basque and Spanish
    • 4.2VOT production in Basque-Spanish bilinguals
    • 4.3Voicing granularity in bilinguals
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data availability statement
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 31 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.21081.sou
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