Intoxication Effects on Bilingual Speech

Charles Chang

Boston University

Friday, February 10, 2023
Noon–1:30 p.m.

Lattimore 513

Alcohol intoxication is known to affect various aspects of speech production, but is hypothesized to influence a native language (L1) and nonnative language (L2) differently. In this talk, I will report on two studies exploring the effects of intoxication on speech production by bilinguals in their L1 (German, Korean, Mandarin) and L2 (English). The results support the view that there is a crosslinguistically shared control mechanism for vocal pitch, which is shaped by the functional load of pitch, and contradict the view that intoxication has L2-specific facilitative effects on speech production. I will discuss implications for theories of bilingual phonology, prosodic typology, and second language acquisition.