O processamento da juntura intervocabular por bilingues tardios de português brasileiro e inglês americano

Abstract

Generally, adult learners or late bilinguals acquire a foreign language in an instructed environment. We know the language used in class is somewhat modified, and is different from the so-called naturalistic way. When facing a spontaneous speech context, those learners fell incapable of understanding what is being said. Research indicates that connected speech poses a problem for learners. Although the literature on bilinguals is a growing field, there exist some gaps in need to be filled. This study aims at investigating the processing of word juncture by late Brazilian and American bilinguals in immersion and non-immersion contexts. We hypothesize that the more proficient a learner is the more features of connected speech he/she uses, and if immersion context plays a role in the acquisition of proficiency, then bilinguals in those contexts will use more word boundary phenomena. We propose an experimental study in which we recorded American and Brazilian bilinguals in immersion and non-immersion contexts. This research is divided into three phases. In the first phase, we collected spontaneous speech data from bilinguals. In the second phase, the elicited imitation was the means used to record monolinguals and bilinguals. This protocol assumes that if the bilingual knowledge level is the same as the elicited sentence, then the imitation is accurate. In the third phase, a judgment test was used to rate the number of word junctures, and the bilingual performance in imitating sentences. There were sixty participants altogether. A statistical analysis was undergone in order to compare the bilingual groups according to our variables. The results of the experiment, statistically treated, showed that the number of joints correctly performed, is related to the level of proficiency. However, it was not confirmed that the learning context influences the proficiency.