Cross-linguistic influence in the speech of Philippines-born and US-born Tagalog–English bilinguals in California

This study investigates the production of English and Tagalog voiceless stops by 14 Tagalog–English bilinguals in California, focusing on the effects of birth country and language dominance. Specifically, the study addresses three questions: (1) How do US-born heritage Tagalog speakers differ from Philippines-born heritage speakers in pronunciation? (2) How do their language-specific acoustic realizations in Tagalog and English vary as a function of birthplace? (3) How does individual language dominance influence the production of voiceless stops in both languages? Data from a reading-aloud task reveal that both US-born (Generation 2) and Philippines-born (Generations 1 and 1.5) bilinguals maintain distinct voice onset time (VOT) patterns for /p/, /t/, and /k/ in each language. Compared to US-born speakers, Philippines-born participants produce more ‘Tagalog-like’ VOTs in English, indicating phonetic convergence. Individual analyses further show that English-dominant bilinguals generally produce longer English VOTs than balanced or Tagalog-dominant speakers, whereas this trend was not statistically significant in their Tagalog VOTs. These findings illuminate the sources of cross-linguistic phonological influence and provide novel insight into the phonetic behavior of a heterogeneous and understudied diasporic community in the US, highlighting the interplay of birthplace and language dominance in heritage bilingual speech.