Convergence across dialects in monolingual and bilingual speakers
This paper compares accommodation in first (L1) and second (L2) language speakers across dialect boundaries in a shadowing task. 4 groups of participants were recruited in Australia: L1 speakers of Australian English (AusE), L1 speakers of American English (AmE), and L1 speakers of Russian with AusE or AmE as their first English variety. Participants first recorded baseline tokens of 10 (C)CVC(C) words from each of the lexical sets BATH, PRICE, FACE, NEAR, NURSE, and then they participated in a shadowing task repeating these words after an AmE and AusE speaker. The overall results for rhoticity and diphthongs show that all participants converged to the Australian speaker, and the American group was significantly different from the other groups. There was a significant interaction predicting BATH F2, such that L2 speakers accommodated more than L1 speakers, producing a more backed BATH shadowing the Australian and a more fronted BATH shadowing the American.
