Creaky voice in L2 English and L1 Dutch

While creaky voice is a well-known stylistic-prosodic
feature of American English, its use in other
languages is under-researched. In Dutch, it has been
claimed to be rare and idiosyncratic. Meanwhile, in
L2 acquisition studies, creak has been shown to
exhibit L1-L2 transfer.
We investigate the prevalence of creaky voice and
its development over time in young female speakers
of L1 Dutch and L2 English, who had previously been
shown to converge on L1/L2 segmental features
longitudinally.
Automatic detection of f0 established individual
distributions of creaky and modal phonation. Linear
mixed-effects models of relative creak prevalence
showed that effects of language (L1 vs L2) and style
(read vs spontaneous speech) were limited. Rather,
speakers showed similarly high levels of creak in
their two languages, and stability over time. The
results suggest creak is idiosyncratic, rather than
gradually acquired or converged on, but also that it is
far from rare in Dutch.