Voicing Patterns in Stops among Heritage Speakers of Western Armenian in Lebanon and the US

Kelly, Niamh E. and Keshishian, Lara · 2021

The literature describes Western Armenian as contrasting voiceless aspirated with voiced stops, but since no monolingual Western Armenian community exists, every speaker is a bilingual in a minority-language setting. The study compares two heritage communities: Beirut, where the majority language is Arabic, and the US, where it is English. Lebanese speakers contrast voiced with voiceless unaspirated stops, matching Lebanese Arabic. US speakers were more variable: some showed the English pattern, others kept aspirated voiceless stops but varied within the voiced series. The authors read this as transfer from the majority language in both communities, producing two divergent voicing systems inside one heritage language.

Citation checked against the publisher's record on 2026-07-13.