Production of Greek and Turkish vowels by bilingual speakers

Abstract

The present study examines the acoustic vowel space of Greek and Turkish vowels produced by bilingual speakers. The results are presented for both languages’ vowels production by bilingual speakers, as well as compared with the vowels production by monolingual speakers. It is revealed that the acoustic space of the Greek vowels produced by bilingual speakers is larger than the acoustic space of their Turkish vowels, mainly due to the lower and more front position of the point vowels [a] and [i], respectively. Moreover, the acoustic space of the Greek vowels produced by bilingual speakers is smaller than the one of the Greek vowels produced by monolingual speakers. On the contrary, the acoustic space of the Turkish vowels produced by bilingual speakers is larger than the one of the Turkish vowels produced by monolinguals.