Processing of Prosody and Semantics in Sepedi and L2 English.

A phoneme-detection task shows that listeners of Sepedi use semantic information in processing but not prosody (Experiment 1). Sepedi is a language with no grammaticalised prosodic expression of focus. Sepedi listeners detected phoneme targets faster when the phoneme-bearing words were focussed (as opposed to unfocussed) but not when occurring in a context conducive to prosodic emphasis (as opposed to non-conducive). Experiment 2 tested the role of semantic focus and prosody in processing by Sepedi L1/English L2 listeners (English being a language with systematic focus-to-accent mapping). Non-native listeners detected phoneme-bearing words faster in focussed condition (as opposed to unfocussed) and in accented condition (as opposed to deaccented). The results suggest that the L2 prosodic structure is exploited by Black South African English listeners even if this feature is not present in their L1. Our experiments replicate the pattern of results found in Akker and Cutler's (Biling Lang Cogn 6:81-96, 2003) experiment for Dutch L1/ English L2 listeners, even with listeners whose L1 does not use prosody the way English does.

Heritage Speakers as Part of the Native Language Continuum.

We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.

Intonational differences between L1 and L2 english in South Africa.

Previous studies have shown that characteristics of a person's first language (L1) may transfer to a second language (L2). The current study looks at the extent to which this holds for aspects of intonation as well. More specifically, we investigate to what extent traces of the L1 can be discerned in the way intonation is used in the L2 for two functions: (1) to highlight certain words by making them sound more prominent and (2) to signal continuation or finality in a list by manipulating the speech melody. To this end, the article presents an explorative study into the way focus and boundaries are marked prosodically in Zulu, and it also compares such prosodic functions in two variants of English in South Africa, i.e., English spoken as an L1, and English spoken as an L2/additional language by speakers who have Zulu as their L1. The latter language is commonly referred to as Black South African English. This comparison is interesting from a typological perspective, as Zulu is intonationally different from English, especially in the way prosody is exploited for signalling informationally important stretches of speech. Using a specific elicitation procedure, we found in a first study that speakers of South African English (as L1) mark focused words and position within a list by intonational means, just as in other L1 varieties of English, whereas Zulu only uses intonation for marking continuity or finality. A second study focused on speakers of Black South African English, and compared the prosody of proficient versus less proficient speakers. We found that the proficient speakers were perceptually equivalent to L1 speakers of English in their use of intonation for marking focus and boundaries. The less proficient speakers marked boundaries in a similar way as L1 speakers of English, but did not use prosody for signalling focus, analogous to what is typical of their native language. Acoustic observations match these perceptual results.