Aspiration in Polish: A Sound Change in Progress?

Abstract

Aspiration in the production of /p/t/k/ before a stressed vowel has been traditionally believed to be typical for English, but not Polish. In the speech of Polish-English bilinguals, the length of the Voice Onset Time in English and Polish has been found to be conditioned by phonetic universal effects as well as the stylistic and attitudinal factors, with aspiration functioning as one of the markers. Recently, the use of aspiration in Polish seems to be growing not as a sign of English-accented speech but rather an element of emphatic style. The study reported here explores the use of the longer VOT values in Polish from the perspective of stylistic conditioning, adopting the attention-to-speech paradigm and discussing the relationship between the observed variability and the predictions formed on the basis of universal phonetic tendencies. The observed tendency to lengthen the VOT values in the universally lengthening contexts is claimed to be further affected by the attention paid to speech, which suggests a possible prestigious function of aspiration in Polish. The intriguing questions emerging from the study are whether the change is the effect of language experience and whether it spreads from bilingual/advanced learners of English to monolingual speakers.