This study looks at how people of Spanish ancestry in Southern California make uptalk in both Spanish and English. We propose that cross-linguistic influence in heritage bilinguals' uptalk may occur along multiple dimensions of intonation, following the L2 Intonation Learning Theory. The systemic, frequency, and realizational aspects of heritage bilinguals' uptalk were all examined in this study. The systemic aspect included the presence of uptalk as well as uptalk with IP-final deaccenting. The realizational aspect included pitch excursion and rise duration. The three dimensions of intonation, as shown by our data, exhibit varying degrees of cross-linguistic influence. Uptalk with IP-final deaccenting was produced by heritage bilinguals in both languages (systemic dimension), but it was more prevalent in English than in Spanish (frequency dimension). That is, heritage bilinguals' uptalk in Spanish includes IP-final deaccenting. However, heritage bilinguals appear to be aware that this is a feature of English that is prohibited in Spanish and attempt to suppress it as much as possible when producing uptalk in Spanish. However, in the realizational dimension, the heritage bilinguals demonstrated either individual variability influenced by language learning experience (i.e., rise duration) or phonetic assimilation to English (i.e., pitch excursion). When bilinguals' two languages compete for limited online resources, as in spontaneous speech production, the asymmetry across the dimensions suggests that phonological distinctions between L1 and L2 prosodic structures are maintained, whereas phonetic differences that do not result in any change in meaning are more likely to undergo cross-linguistic influence in order to reduce the cost of online processing. By focusing on heritage bilinguals, this study aims to fill a gap in the literature on the cross-linguistic influence of intonation. Heritage bilingualism introduces bilingual contexts that are frequently overlooked in conventional L2 acquisition scenarios (such as asymmetry between order of acquisition and language dominance, transfer from L2 to L1 intonation, and so on). The study of heritage bilinguals' intonation will contribute to the development of robust models of bilingual intonation because heritage bilinguals share many aspects of cross-linguistic influence.
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