“When languages collide” A study on cross-linguistic phonological interference in multilingual communities in Malaysia

Chaw, Yi Vern (2025) “When languages collide” A study on cross-linguistic phonological interference in multilingual communities in Malaysia. Final Year Project, UTAR.

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Abstract

This study analyses the types of segmental and suprasegmental interference as well as the effect of executive functioning on the prevalence of phonological interference in Malaysian bilinguals and multilinguals. By focusing on four different language groups present in Malaysia, this study aims to identify the correlation between the inhibition of linguistic interference in the reading tasks and the inhibition of irrelevant stimuli. The segmental variants were examined by utilizing Weinreich (1953)’s framework while suprasegmental interference focused solely on stress placement and its role in polysyllabic words, compound words and at sentence-level. Variants produced in both sections were related to influence from the speakers’ dominant language and Selinker’s Interlanguage Theory (1972). Next, the role of executive functions in inhibitory control was investigated via the results of the Simon Task and Stroop Task to test the bilingual advantage hypothesis as well as whether better performance in executive function tasks translates to a lower susceptibility to phonological interference. The data of this study revealed that the Mandarin Chinese-dominant speakers produced the greatest number of variants overall while the English-dominant speakers and Tamil-dominant speakers showed the least variants in segmental interference and suprasegmental interference respectively. Despite significant anomalies in phonological variants produced and performance in Simon and Stroop Task, one notable correlation between low variant production and stronger performance in the Stroop Task was identified in English-dominant speakers, suggesting that language dominance plays a role in inhibition of interference and irrelevant stimuli.

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