Examining the effects of stress on vowel production in heritage vs. monolingual Spanish school-aged child speakers

While Spanish adult heritage speakers (i.e., HSs) show vocalic reduction in unstressed position, it is still not known whether vowel reduction is already
present as HSs develop their language speechspecific patterns. We examined the effect of lexical stress on 24 primary school-aged child HSs (mean age = 8;11 ± 2) and compared their non-high vowel productions to those of 12 Spanish monolingual speakers (mean age = 8;12 ±1;6). Our results showed that non-high vowels in disyllabic words are produced higher in unstressed positions when compared to stressed positions. In addition, stress interacted with group (HS vs monolingual) for the /e/ vowel. Along the front-back dimension, our findings only show a cross-over interaction between stress and group for /a/. For all other vowels, no significant differences were found between HSs and monolinguals. The lack of vowel reduction during childhood may be due to overall late development of vowel reduction patterns.