The effect of bilingualism on vocal parameters related to vocal fatigue among Spanish-English bilingual speakers

Over 20% of individuals in the US speak more than one language. It is well-known that language fluency affects speech production; however, there is little information on how it affects voice production. The goal of the current study was to identify the task and acoustic measures that could be applied to future research investigating vocal production in bilingual speakers. Acoustic analyses were conducted on speech recordings from the Archive of L1 and L2 Scripted and Spontaneous Transcripts and Recordings (ALLSSTAR). The participants were 11 Spanish-English bilingual speakers (8 males, 3 females). Each speaker recorded speech during three spontaneous speech tasks (SS) and five reading tasks (RS). Acoustic analyses were conducted to obtain the following measures: sound pressure level standard deviation (SPL_sd), fundamental frequency deviation (F0_sd), speech rate, and time. Results revealed an effect of gender on F0_sd and an effect of task on F0_sd for females. A language effect for SPL_sd, was found as English was found to be statistically significantly higher than Spanish for both males and females. An effect of task was also found, SPL_sd was statistically lower in read speech than spontaneous across languages for both females and males. A non-significant effect of language was found for speech rate as mean speech rate was found to be higher in Spanish than English for spontaneous speech. Results provide baseline levels of parameters relevant to vocal fatigue for bilingual Spanish-English speakers.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Speech & Hearing Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2021

Author dc:creator

• Webster, Jossemia Dulce

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ishikawa, Keiko
• Bottalico, Pasquale
• Hualde, Jose
• Cantor-Cutiva, Lady

• vocal fatigue, bilingual, speech rate

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2021 Jossemia Webster

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113209

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/113209