Formant Dynamics of Bilingual Identical Twins in Non-Contemporaneous Speech

This study investigates the formant dynamics of Mandarin and Shanghainese /ua/ in bilingual identical twins. Data collected from two sessions were analysed using Discriminant Analysis. The results show that despite the same organic structure and similar language environment, differences can be found in the formant dynamics of identical twins. However, cross-session analysis suggests that for identical twins, long-term withinspeaker differences can be larger than between-speaker differences. A comparison between the subjects’ dominant and non-dominant language shows that the twins are more similar in their dominant language. We also found that separated twins are not necessarily more different than non-separated twins.