Plasticity of Native Intonation in the L1 of English Migrants to Austria

Abstract

This study examines the plasticity of native language intonation in English-Austrian German sequential bilinguals who have migrated to Austria in adulthood by comparing it to that of monolingual English and monolingual Austrian control speakers. Intonation was analysed along four intonation dimensions proposed by the L2 Intonation Learning theory (LILt): the inventory of categorical phonological elements (‘systemic’ dimension), their phonetic implementation (‘realizational’), the meaning associated with phonological elements (‘semantic’), and their frequency of use (‘frequency’). This allowed us to test whether each intonation dimension is equally permeable to L2-on-L1 influences. The results revealed L2-on-L1 effects on each dimension. These consistently took the form of assimilation. The extent of assimilation appeared to depend on whether the cross-language differences were gradient or categorical, with the former predominantly resulting in intermediate merging and the latter in a complete transfer. The results suggest that native intonation remains plastic in all its dimensions, resulting in pervasive modifications towards the L2. Finally, in this first application of the LILt to the context of L1 attrition, the study confirms the model’s suitability not only to acquisition of L2 intonation but also for predicting where modifications of L1 intonation are likely to occur.

Keywords

• speech plasticity
• malleability of speech
• phonetic attrition
• intonation
• L2 Intonation Learning theory (LILt)
• cross-language influences