Speech characteristics of bilingual speakers of English and Spanish

This study compares the speech characteristics of bilingual speakers of English and Spanish. Some of the issues that surround the definition of bilingualism are: age of acquisition, language usage in the home, level of competency in each language, and ability to activate and suppress each language (code-switching). This study looked at the spectral characteristics of phonetically identical vowels and stop consonants produced by fluent and nonfluent bilingual speakers of Spanish and English. The differences in production of the universal vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/ were analyzed as defined by their first and second formants (F1 and F2). The differences in production of stop consonants /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /g/ were analyzed as defined by their voice onset time (VOT). Previous work has led to the development of different conflicting positions regarding the production of vowels by bilinguals across languages. No study has looked at VOT values of all stops for fluent and nonfluent speakers of English and Spanish across languages. Thus, the present study will focus on the inter-speaker spectral characteristics of phonetically identical vowels and stop consonants produced by fluent and nonfluent bilingual speakers of Spanish and English.