Tempo, information rate, and communicative efficiency in L2 speech
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2022/13/0001/000543Keywords:
Bilingual speech communication, Speech rate, Information transmission rate, Communicative efficiencyAbstract
This presentation seeks links between speech tempo, information transmission rate, and communicative efficiency in conversations involving L2 participants. First, we show that L2 speech tempo is influenced by both “state” and “trait” characteristics. Specifically, while L2 speech is invariably slower than L1 speech (L1 vs. L2 “state”), within bilingual individuals L1 rate is a significant predictor of L2 rate (individual “trait”). Next, we show that the slower rate of L2 speech (fewer syllables/second) is compounded by lower L2 information density (more syllables/text), yielding a very low L2 information transmission rate (fewer bits of information transmitted/second). Finally, we show variation in conversation-based cooperative task completion time depending on the degree of language background overlap between task participants. Together, these studies provide a scaffold for eventually linking acoustic-level temporal variation to discourse-level communicative efficiency in L2 speech communication.
References
Baese-Berk, M., Morrill, T. 2015. Speaking rate consistency in native and non-native speakers of English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 138(3), EL223-EL228.
Baker, R., Hazan, V. 2011. DiapixUK: Task materials for the elicitation of multiple spontaneous speech dialogs. Behavior Research Methods, 43(3), 761-770.
Bradlow, A. 2022. Information encoding and transmission profiles of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speech. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25(1), 148-162.
Bradlow, A. R., Kim, M., Blasingame, M. 2017. Language-independent talker-specificity in first-language and second-language speech production by bilingual talkers: L1 speaking rate predicts L2 speaking rate. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 141(2), 886-899.
Coupé, C., Oh, Y. M., Dediu, D., Pellegrino, F. 2019. Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: Comparable information rates across the human communicative niche. Science Advances, 5(9), eaaw2594.
De Jong, N. H., Groenhout, R., Schoonen, R., Hulstijn, J. H. 2015. Second language fluency: Speaking style or proficiency? Correcting measures of second language fluency for first language behavior. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(2), 223-243.
Derwing, T. M., Munro, M. J., Thomson, R. I., Rossiter, M. J. 2009. The relationship between L1 fluency and L2 fluency development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31(4), 533-557.
Flege, J. E. 1984. The detection of French accent by American listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 76, 692-707.
García Lecumberri, M. L., Cooke, M., Wester, M. 2017. A bi-directional task-based corpus of learners’ conversational speech. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 3(2), 175-195.
Guion, S. G., Flege, J. E., Liu, S. H., Yeni-Komshian, G. H. 2000. Age of learning effects on the duration of sentences produced in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21(2), 205-228.
Major, R. C. 2007. Identifying a foreign accent in an unfamiliar language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 29(4), 539-556.
Trouvain, J., Möbius, B. 2014. Sources of variation of articulation rate in native and non-native speech: Comparisons of French and German. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 7, 275-279.
Van Engen, K. J., Baese-Berk, M., Baker, R. E., Choi, A., Kim, M., Bradlow, A. R. 2010. The Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English: Communicative efficiency across conversational dyads with varying language alignment profiles. Language and Speech, 53(4), 510-540.
Winters, S. J., Levi, S. V., Pisoni, D. B. 2008. Identification and discrimination of bilingual talkers across languages. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123(6), 4524-4538.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
