Description:
<jats:sec><jats:title>Aims and Objectives:</jats:title><jats:p> This study investigates the effects of code-switching on vowel quality, pitch and duration among English–French bilinguals. Code-switching has been claimed to influence the morphology, syntax and lexicon, but not the phonology of the switched language. However, studies on voice-onset time have found subtle phonetic effects of code-switching, even though there are no categorical phonological effects. We investigate this further through the following three questions: (1) Are F1 and F2 influenced in the process of code-switching? (2) Are code-switched words hyper-articulated? (3) Does code-switching have an effect on vowel duration before voiced and voiceless consonants? </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Methodology:</jats:title><jats:p> To address our research questions we relied on an insertional switching method where words from one language were inserted into carrier phrases of the other to simulate English–French code-switching environments. Bilingual speakers were recorded while they read code-switched sentences as well as sentences that did not involve code-switching, that is, monolingual sentences. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Data and Analysis:</jats:title><jats:p> The vowels of target words in the recorded utterances were compared – code-switched contexts against monolingual contexts – for vocalic duration, F0, F1 and F2. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Findings/Conclusions:</jats:title><jats:p> Like previous voice-onset time studies, our results indicate that code-switching does not shift the phonology to that of the embedded language. We did, however, find subtle lower level phonetic effects, especially in the French target words; we also found evidence of hyper-articulation in code-switched words. At the prosodic level, target switch-words approached the prosodic contours of the carrier phrases they are embedded in. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Originality:</jats:title><jats:p> The approach taken in this study is novel for its investigation of vowel properties instead of voice-onset time. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Significance:</jats:title><jats:p> This new approach to investigating code-switching adds to our understanding of how code-switching affects pronunciation. </jats:p></jats:sec>