Chapter 15. Production of Spanish laterals in early sequential Spanish-English bilinguals

Abstract

This chapter reports on the phonetic production of Spanish laterals of a group of Spanish heritage speakers. Twenty adult female early sequential bilinguals who were all English dominant participated in the investigation. The study investigated the question if the participants’ Spanish productions had any evidence of influence of the dominant language (English). The productions of the target Spanish laterals in different syllable positions and adjacent to different vowels were elicited in a reading aloud task. Bilinguals’ productions were compared to those of monolingual controls and were, overall, found like those. Although there was individual variation in bilinguals’ productions, English dominance scores did not seem related to these variations. Thus, the dominance ratings obtained through language use, proficiency, self-reporting, and language attitudes do not necessarily translate into the phonetics/phonology of the bilinguals.