Chapter 14. Acoustic properties of word-final vowels and the acquisition of gender in Spanish-English heritage speakers

This chapter explores whether contact-induced reduction in the inventory of Spanish unstressed vowels due to contact with English impacts the development of gender morphology and concord in Spanish-English bilinguals, through the comparison of recent findings from narratives elicited from bilingual adults and children born in the US. Final unstressed /a, e, o/ were acoustically analyzed and noun phrases were grammatically analyzed. Adult early bilinguals displayed a large degree of vocalic overlap but were highly accurate in gender. Children showed variability in their patterns of vocalic overlap and in gender accuracy ranging between 66% to 100%. Results do not offer a strong support for the hypothesis of a phonetic contribution to heritage gender divergence and call for refined analyses of the interaction between phonetics and morphosyntax in gender acquisition.