Estimates of speech efficiency in monolingual and bilingual speakers of English

The Speech Efficiency Score (SES) serves as an acoustic metric for assessing fluency in conversational speech, particularly in the temporal domain [1]. This study leverages SES to investigate conversational speech efficiency among native speakers of American English (AE) compared to speakers of Mandarin-accented English (MAE). Our findings indicate a disparity in speaking rate and articulation rate between the AE and MAE groups, with the AE group exhibiting significantly faster speech. However, no significant differences were observed in SES and vocabulary diversity between the two groups. We discuss these results in the context of the interplay between speaking rate, speech fluency, and vocabulary diversity, shedding light on the maintenance of speech efficiency among bilingual speakers.

This is the accepted manuscript version of an article published by S. Karger AG in [Estimates of Speech Efficiency in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers of English. Folia Phoniatrica et Logopaedica p1-10 (2024)] and available on www.karger.com/Article/FullText/10.1159/000540671