Acoustic characteristics of Greek vowels produced by English-Greek bilingual adults

Abstract

The present study investigates the acoustic characteristics (duration, F0, F1, F2 and F3) of the five Greek vowels produced in both the stressed and unstressed condition by English-Greek bilingual adults in comparison to Greek monolingual age-matched peers. The results revealed significant differences between the two groups in terms of duration. In addition, significantly lower F0 values were found in all vowels produced by bilingual speakers in the stressed condition. However, our analysis concerning the effect of stress on the duration and F0 values, as acoustic correlates of stress in both the English and Greek phonetic systems, showed that the two groups of speakers use them in a similar way. Regarding the formant frequencies, the two groups seem to differ slightly, with the bilinguals producing the vowels lower and further in the vowel acoustic space.