Aims and objectives:

In this study, we consider the acquisition of allophonic contrast and phonetic detail in lateral consonants by second-generation Sylheti-English bilingual children in London, UK.

Design/methodology/approach:

Acoustic analysis was conducted on productions of /l/ by Sylheti bilingual children, Sylheti monolingual adults and English monolingual children.

Data and analysis:

Tokens of /l/ were elicited across initial, medial and final word positions from 14 bilingual Sylheti-English children, 10 monolingual English children, and 4 monolingual Sylheti adults. Acoustic measurements of F2–F1 were analysed using Bayesian linear mixed-effects modelling.

Findings and conclusions:

Our results show that bilingual children produce monolingual-like positional patterns in Sylheti, with very clear laterals in all positions. In contrast, bilinguals produce monolingual-like positional allophony in English, but they differ in phonetic detail, with bilinguals producing much clearer laterals than monolingual children across all positions.

Originality:

This study is the first to examine the development of allophonic contrast and phonetic detail in both of a bilingual’s languages in a contact scenario. This provides new insights into how contact varieties adopt aspects of structure and detail from each language. We also report valuable data from Sylheti-English bilinguals, who are an understudied community.

Significance/limitations:

Our study highlights the value of considering structural and detailed aspects of cross-linguistic sound systems, whereby one aspect may show monolingual-like patterns and another aspect may show distinctive patterns. We propose that the results in this study represent the development of a new sound system out of language contact, with second-generation bilingual children producing a hybrid system that combines influences from both heritage and host languages.

中文翻译：

---

在双语社区中获取同音字结构和语音细节：西尔赫蒂语-英语双语儿童产生的侧向音

目的和目标：

在这项研究中，我们考虑了英国伦敦的第二代Sylheti-English双语儿童在侧辅音中获取同位音对比和语音细节。

设计/方法/方法：

对Sylheti双语儿童，Sylheti单语成人和英语单语儿童产生的/ l /进行了声学分析。

数据与分析：

在最初，中间和最后一个单词位置中，从14个双语西尔希提英语儿童，10个单语英语孩子和4个单语Sylheti成人中获得了/ l /标记。使用贝叶斯线性混合效应模型分析了F2-F1的声学测量。

结论和结论：

我们的研究结果表明，双语儿童在西尔赫蒂语中会产生单语样的姿势模式，所有姿势的侧位都很清晰。相比之下，双语者会在英语中产生类似单语的位置异位词，但在语音细节上却有所不同，双语者在所有位置上所产生的侧面要比单语儿童清晰得多。

独创性：

这项研究是第一个在接触情景下研究双语两种语言的同音符号对比和语音细节的发展情况。这为接触品种如何采用每种语言的结构和细节方面提供了新的见解。我们还将报告来自Sylheti-English双语者的宝贵数据，而Sylheti-English双语者却是被忽视的社区。

意义/局限性：

我们的研究强调了考虑跨语言声音系统的结构和详细方面的价值，其中一个方面可能显示出类似单语的模式，而另一个方面可能显示出独特的模式。我们建议，这项研究的结果代表了一种新的声音系统的开发，该系统脱离了语言接触，第二代双语儿童产生了一个混合系统，该系统结合了传统语言和宿主语言的影响。