Isteliyeva, Aida2023-06-012023-06-012023Isteliyeva, A. (2023). Capstone project: Pitch change in Kazakh-Russian-English multilingual young adults. School of Sciences and Humanitieshttp://nur.nu.edu.kz/handle/123456789/7164If you ever interacted with the same person in different languages, you might have noticed their voice sounding differently. This phenomenon is the object of this study about the change of pitch Kazakh-Russian-English trilinguals exhibit in speaking different languages. A physical representation of a human's pitch is fundamental frequency - the frequency with which vocal cords vibrate during speech. To see whether a change of pitch can be proved empirically, I conducted a series of recordings among 32 students of Nazarbayev University. This resulted in 192 recordings which were grouped depending on the gender and the first language of the speaker, as well as the elicitation method. The recordings were analyzed for each separate participant and in groupings using a t-test and linear mixed effect model. The participants also had to provide us with their self-assessed level of linguistic skills and their linguistic repertoire. The possible explanations for our results were provided by previous research in Bilingualism studies and Psycholinguistics. My study results in several findings regarding the interaction of different factors and the change of pitch. One of them is that the change of pitch seems to depend on the first language of the speaker. The change of pitch overall does not exhibit universal tendencies: separate analysis for each of the participants shows that change of pitch exists as it manifests in 28 out of 32 participants, however, there is no single reason or interaction that attests to all of the differences present in my data. Confidence level also shows a significant result for Kazakh speakers but not the others.enAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United StatesType of access: Open AccessPitchKazakh-Russian-English multilingualyoung adultsCAPSTONE PROJECT: PITCH CHANGE IN KAZAKH-RUSSIAN-ENGLISH MULTILINGUAL YOUNG ADULTSCapstone Project