Perception of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian sibilants: Heritage U.S. vs. homeland speakers. A pilot study

Many dialectal varieties of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian (BCS) show some level of merger of standard BCS alveolo-palatal and hard post-alveolar affricate series. This paper reports the results of a pilot study of the perception of BCS sibilants by heritage speakers in the United States. Twenty speakers were given a forced identification task. Results indicate that second generation heritage speakers are worse in performance than first generation heritage speakers. Additionally, heritage Croatian and Bosnian speakers across generations perform worse than heritage Serbian speakers.