Speech disfluencies in bilingual Greek-English young adults

The purpose of this study was to investigate the frequency and types of disfluencies in Greek-English bilingual adults across naturalistic speech samples and compare frequency and types of disfluencies between the participants’ L1 and L2. Participants in the study included 26 Greek-English bilingual young adults. All participants were sequential bilinguals, whose first language was Greek and second language was English. Two speech samples were collected in each language, a conversational and a narrative sample, which were subsequently analyzed for the frequency and types of disfluencies. Results indicated that participants produced more typical disfluencies in English compared to Greek across speaking samples. The most frequent types of disfluencies were filled pauses and vowel prolongations (without tension or struggle) across speaking samples and languages. Our results revealed differences in the types and frequencies of disfluencies produced in participants’ native compared to their second language. Results add to the growing body of literature addressing the manifestation of speech disfluencies in bilingual speakers. •Greek-English bilingual adults had more disfluencies in their second language (English).•The most frequent disfluency type in English was filled pauses, followed by sound prolongations.•The most frequent disfluency type in Greek was sound prolongations, followed by filled pauses.