Production of high vowels in Canadian English and Canadian French: A comparison of early bilingual and monolingual speakers

The goal of this study is to investigate how monolingual and early bilingual speakers of Canadian English and Canadian French produce high vowels. The vowels of the bilingual participants were assessed in their two languages, thus permitting the exploration of interactions between the two languages. Findings indicated that the bilinguals formed separate categories across the two languages for similar vowels, and produced monolingual-like values for these vowels. When speaking English, they produced lax vowels that were low and less dispersed (for F2); these vowels were similar to the vowels of the English-speaking monolinguals. When speaking French the bilinguals produced lax vowels that were somewhat higher and more peripheral, like the French monolinguals. The results of the present study differ from investigations of late bilinguals, whose vowel productions exhibited influences of the phonemic categories of their first language. This work contributes to a small but growing body of research of the acoustic-phonetic differences between Canadian English and Canadian French and to the understanding of acoustic-phonetic abilities of early bilingual speakers. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.