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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 12:2 (2022) ► pp.163–190

An investigation into utterance-fluency patterns of advanced LL bilinguals

Afrikaans and Spanish in Patagonia

ORCID logo | University of Michigan

Adult late-LL learners are the main source of participants for research on utterance fluency. Although there are ample opportunities to study these learners, bilinguals who come from a more diverse background are under-researched. This paper investigates the effects of long-term bilingualism on the second-language fluency patterns of a community of LL-Afrikaans/LL-Spanish bilinguals residing in Patagonia, Argentina. These third-generation bilinguals are dominant in their LL and are undergoing LL attrition. The acoustic analysis draws from a corpus of Spanish sociolinguistic interviews obtained from the bilinguals, who were compared to Spanish monolinguals on speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. For some measures (mean-syllable duration and phonation-time ratio), the bilinguals performed similarly to the Spanish monolinguals, whereas for other measures the results were mixed: the bilinguals produced less filled pauses, but used longer silent pauses and more reformulations, than the monolinguals. These outcomes are theorized within current models of LL-speech production.

Keywords: utterance fluency, sequential bilingualism, Spanish, Afrikaans
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Models of speech production: Overview
    • 2.2Utterance fluency in L speech
    • 2.3The Afrikaans-Spanish community: An overview
    • 2.4Research questions and hypotheses
  • 3.The current study
    • 3.1Speakers
    • 3.2Acoustic analysis
    • 3.3Fluency metrics
      • Speed fluency
      • Breakdown fluency
      • Repair fluency
    • 3.4Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Speed fluency
    • 4.2Breakdown fluency
    • 4.3Repair fluency
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Speed fluency
    • 5.2Breakdown fluency
    • 5.3Repair fluency
    • 5.4Approaching L fluency: Theoretical considerations
    • 5.5Limitations and future research
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 24 September 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.19090.gar
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