![]() It also builds upon previous studies by examining phonemic contrasts, rather than continuous phonetic variables, such as VOT, f0, and formant frequencies. Our study employed a “real speech” binary perception task to investigate whether underlying representations in the L1 are modified in individuals who acquired English as a late L2 to a high degree of proficiency and, as such, expands on the aforementioned studies. Such methodology, although rich in terms of speech production information, reveals less about the cognitive processes that underpin differences between monolingual and bilingual speech. 2018, who found L1 attrition within the phonological domain of production in Albanian–English bilinguals living in London, UK) and were also interested in variation within the bilingual returnees.īoth of the aforementioned studies, which investigated late bilinguals who returned to the L1 environment (albeit after a shorter stay than the current returnees), applied an acoustic analysis to measure pronunciation deviations in bilingual L1 speech in comparison to monolinguals. We, therefore, examined whether these contrasts would be perceived differently by the Albanian–English returnees than the functional Albanian monolinguals who had never lived abroad, potentially as a function of long-term English acquisition abroad (see, e.g., de Leeuw et al. Although some of these sounds exist in English (i.e., and typically occur in complementary distribution in Standard British English, with appearing in onset position, in coda and both /tʃ/ and /ɹ/ occur in English ( Wells 1982)), none of these phonemic contrasts found in Albanian occur in English. ‘stay’), respectively ( Camaj 1984 Dodi 2004 Memushaj 2011). ‘mountain’) and the voiced alveolar approximant /ɹ/ and voiced alveolar trill /r/ in words such as rini /ɹɪni/ (Eng. ‘breaks’) as do the lateral approximants /ɫ/ and /l/ in words such as mall /maɫ/ (Eng. In codified Standard Albanian, the voiceless palatal plosive /c/ and the voiceless alveolar affricate /tʃ/ occur in contrastive distribution in words such as qan /can/ (Eng. More specifically, our study aimed to further the understanding of potential L1 restructuring in late bilingual returnees through examining both accuracy rates and response times on a minimal pair identification task in Albanian native speakers with English as a late L2. We were interested to find out whether this would be the case by examining perceptual abilities of late bilingual Albanian–English returnees who had lived in an Anglophone environment for on average over a decade. Although research into returnees is limited, it is generally proposed that late bilinguals who evidence L1 attrition abroad recover native language abilities upon returning to their home country ( Major 1992 Yagmur et al. Very little is known about the native language (here, used synonymously with first language, i.e., L1) of bilinguals who return home after an extended stay in an L2 environment (but see Flores 2015, 2020, who has examined grammatical variables such as verb placement and gender marking). Such studies have found that within the domains of phonetics and phonology, long term pronunciation changes occur in the L1 of some, but not all, late bilinguals living in a second language (L2) environment. To date, first language (L1) attrition research has mainly focused on late bilinguals who live abroad. These phonological findings enhance our understanding of perceptual L1 attrition whilst underlining the need to examine language change in the country of origin in L1 attrition research. Examination of variation within the bilinguals indicated that (4) the younger the speaker was when they left Albania, and the more recently they had returned, the lower their accuracy was in identifying the laterals. In combination with other research showing that Albanian is undergoing a merger of /c/ and /tʃ/, our findings suggest that this merger is more advanced in monolinguals than bilinguals-probably because the bilinguals were abroad when the merger started. Surprisingly, (2) bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in accurately identifying /c/ versus /tʃ/ and (3) no significant group differences were found for the other two phonemic contrasts. Results showed that (1) reaction times for /c/ versus /tʃ/ were longest for both groups, indicating that this contrast was “harder” than the other contrasts. Using a “real speech” binary minimal pair identification task, we compared the accuracy and response times of bilingual returnees against functional Albanian monolinguals who had never lived abroad. These phonemic contrasts do not occur in English. In Standard Albanian, there are phonemic contrasts between /c/ and /tʃ/, /ɫ/ and /l/, and /ɹ/ and /r/. This research investigated contrastive perception of L1 phonological categories in Albanian–English bilinguals who returned to Albania after living abroad for over on average a decade.
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