Differentiation and interaction in the vowel productions of trilingual children

Abstract

This study investigates the vowel productions of two simultaneous trilingual sisters, aged 6;8 and 8;1, who are growing up with English, Italian and Spanish in California. The children’s realisations were analysed acoustically and compared to those of the main adult input providers in their home, using Watt and Fabricius’ S-centroid vowel normalisation procedure [3, 16]. The results revealed a high degree of within-language and cross-language differentiation for both children, but also some evidence for cross-linguistically overlapping patterns. At the same time, many of the children’s productions differed from those of the input providers. Together, the results suggest complex cross-linguistic interactions as well as the influence of socio-phonetic factors.