Repeated Mention Reduction in L2 English Spontaneous Speech

This study examined the effect of language proficiency on repeated mention reduction in L2 English spontaneous speech by Korean native speakers. We found a significant effect of L2 proficiency on word duration in repeated mentions. Specifically, as with native English speakers (EN), Korean learners of English with high English proficiency (KH) reduced the duration of repeated words, while those with intermediate English proficiency (KI) did not. The present study also found that the durations of the subsequently repeated words were statistically shorter than those of the second mentioned words for the KH group (as well as for the EN group), while this was not observed in the KI group, confirming the effect of language proficiency on subsequent mentions in terms of word duration. We suggest that the current findings support a lexical-accessbased model [4, 15], where level of L2 proficiency reflects how easily an L2 learner modulates the link between lexical access and articulatory planning.