Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Interspeech Posture In Spanish-English Bilingual Adults, Merrily Rose Shary

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Interspeech posture (ISP) is a term used to define the position of a person’s articulators when they are preparing to speak. Research suggests that ISP may be representative of a speaker’s phonological knowledge in a particular language, as determined empirically with ultrasound measures of the tongue in English-French bilinguals (Wilson & Gick, 2014). It is possible, therefore, that measuring ISP could be a diagnostic tool for determining phonological knowledge in bilingual speakers. However, more information on ISP in typical adult bilingual speakers is needed before diagnostic claims can be made. For example, ISP is believed to be language specific, and …

Hesitation Rate As A Speaker-Specific Cue In Bilingual Individuals, Jamie Lynn Armbrecht

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Hesitation use is common among all speakers, regardless of whether they are engaged in their dominant or non-dominant language (Fehringer & Fry, 2007; Reed, 2000). The question is whether a bilingual speaker will engage in the same types of hesitations in both languages. If hesitation patterns can be identified consistently across speakers regardless of language, their use as an acoustic cue for speaker identification may be possible. This study examines differences in hesitation use across languages and speaking contexts (reading vs. conversation) in bilingual speakers.

Twenty Spanish-English bilinguals (ages 19 -31 years) were tested as part of a larger speaker …