Phonological influence in bilectal speakers of Brazilian and European Portuguese

This article investigates naturalistic acquisition of a second dialect (D2), comparing the global accent of speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) exposed to European Portuguese (EP), either as children or as adults (early vs late bilectals). The focus is on the predicted advantage of an early age of onset of the D2, as well as possible crosslinguistic influence from the D2 onto the first dialect (D1). The study is an Accent Rating Task, where 50 raters judged the global accent of 30 BP speakers living in Portugal (15 early + 15 late bilectals), who were recorded in both BP and EP modes. Using a 6-point Likert-type scale, the raters judged whether the speakers sounded Brazilian or Portuguese and also indicated how certain they were about their judgment. The data consisted of two 10-second audio snippets from each speaker, one in BP and the other in EP mode (altogether 60 items). In addition, there were 10 control items produced by native BP and EP speakers. Several mixed-effects models compared the target groups to each other and to the monolectal controls. Both the early and late bilectals were rated as Brazilian in BP mode, but the degree of rater certainty was significantly lower for early than for late bilectals, which was again lower than for BP monolectals. In EP mode, early bilectals were perceived as Portuguese (though the raters were less certain than when rating EP monolectals), while late bilectals were judged as Brazilian. The study adds to the novel but increasing body of research on speakers of two closely related varieties. This research illustrates that bilectalism displays a number of similarities with bilingualism, specifically that there may be significant effects of age of onset of the D2.