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18 - The Speech Production of Bilingual Adults

from Part IV - The Phonetics and Phonology of the Bilingual Adult

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 November 2024

By
Joseph V. Casillas
Edited by
Mark Amengual
Mark Amengual
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Summary

Adults undertaking the endeavor of learning a new language can attest to the difficulty involved with producing the sounds and prosody of the target language. A principal aim of research on adult speech production is to comprehend the mechanisms and processes that differentiate adult bilingual speech development from bilingual speech that develops earlier in life. It is clear that individuals who learn an additional language in adulthood typically encounter some difficulties that early learners do not. In particular, these difficulties arise at the segmental level when acquiring novel sound categories and novel sound contrasts, as well as at the suprasegmental level when learning to produce non-native prosodic structures related to intonation, stress, rhythm, tone, and tempo. The present chapter provides a selective overview of the current state-of-the-art in adult bilingual speech production. Furthermore, this chapter considers theoretical and methodological areas for improvement, as well as avenues for future research.

Keywords

speech productionsecond language acquisitionlearning contextsL2 pronunciationphonetic categoriesL2 phoneticsaccentsadult language learningindividual differencesultimate attainmentlanguage inputlanguage useopen sciencereproducible researchlongitudinal research

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The Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Phonetics and Phonology , pp. 407 - 425
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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