title: Influence of L2 proficiency on kinematic duration of single words: Real and novel word production by Bengali-English speakers.
abstract: The study explored the influence of second language proficiency on the kinematic duration of single words. Participants produced real and novel words with variable stress targets (e.g., trochaic and iambic) embedded in first language (L1) and second language (L2) sentence frames. Participants were monolingual English speakers (n=10) and Bengali-English bilinguals with early exposure to English (n=10) and late exposure to English (n=10). Bengali was the L1 and English was the L2 for all 20 bilingual participants. Duration of lip movements for the target real and novel words was analysed. Results suggest that kinematic duration of single words was not influenced by speakers' L2 proficiency. However, L2 proficiency influenced foreign accent ratings for the real words, but not the novel words. Kinematic duration and perception of accent were not correlated, which might imply that accent reduction might not always be a direct consequence of shorter word duration.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communication Disorders, Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas 78666, USA. rc39@txstate.edu
authors.forename: Rahul
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chakraborty
authors.forename: Ramalingam
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shanmugam
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D006801:Humans; D008046:Lip / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013997:Time Factors; D014741:Video Recording; D055815:Young Adult