Longitudinal Developments in Bilingual Second Language Acquisition and First Language Attrition of Speech: The Case of Arnold Schwarzenegger

The purpose of this investigation was to trace first (L1) and second language (L2) segmental speech development in the Austrian German–English late bilingual Arnold Schwarzenegger over a period 40 years, which makes it study examine bilingual’s several decades both their languages. To end, acoustic measurements voice onset time (VOT) durations word-initial plosives (Study 1) formant frequencies German English monophthongs 2) were conducted using samples collected from broadcast interviews. results Study 1 showed merging Schwarzenegger’s voiceless his productions as manifested significant lengthening VOT duration plosives, shortening closer L1 production norms. Similar findings evidenced 2, revealing that some L2 vowel categories had moved together course immersion. These suggest accent is likely develop reorganize due dynamic interactions between system.