ERIC Number: EJ781432
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2008-Jan
Pages: 25
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0010-0277
EISSN: N/A
Discrimination of Coronal Stops by Bilingual Adults: The Timing and Nature of Language Interaction
Sundara, Megha; Polka, Linda
Cognition, v106 n1 p234-258 Jan 2008
The current study was designed to investigate the timing and nature of interaction between the two languages of bilinguals. For this purpose, we compared discrimination of Canadian French and Canadian English coronal stops by simultaneous bilingual, monolingual and advanced early L2 learners of French and English. French /d/ is phonetically described as dental whereas English /d/ is described as alveolar. Using a categorial AXB task, the performance of all four groups was compared to chance and to the performance of native Hindi listeners. Hindi listeners performed well above chance in discriminating French and English /d/-initial syllables. The discrimination performance of advanced early L2 learners, but not simultaneous bilinguals, was consistent with one merged category for coronal stops in the two languages. The data provide evidence for interaction in L2 learners as well as simultaneous bilinguals; however, the nature of the interaction is different in the two groups.
Descriptors: Interaction, Monolingualism, French, English, Indo European Languages, Bilingualism, Phonetics, Language Research, Second Language Learning, Foreign Countries
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A