Acoustic analysis of code-switched data amongst Maltese bilingual speakers

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on research conducted with the intention of identifying and analysing the prosodic features that occur at points of code-switching amongst Maltese-English bilinguals. The data collected was analysed using a custom-made, feature-extractor intended to extract specific features at the points of code-switching. The aim of this dissertation is to identify the prosodic features that occur and analyse the phonological effects, if any, at moments of a code-switch utterance with a view to finding out whether these features serve as a cue of some sort of an upcoming code-switch. The analysis carried out also serves as a means to get a better understanding of the phonetic features and phonological processes that occur during code-switching.