The development of the phoneme inventory is driven by the acoustic-phonetic properties of one's native language. Neural representation of speech is known to be shaped by language experience, as indexed by cortical responses, and recent studies suggest that subcortical processing also exhibits this attunement to native language. However, most work to date has focused on the differences between t...

This paper reports on a speech database that includes non-native pronunciation variants of city names/town names from several European languages. The database is designed as a research tool for the study of pronunciation variants in this specific domain that occur in different groups of non-native speakers. The ongoing data collection currently comprises 20 to 27 native speakers of 3 languages ...

Neuropsychological studies in brain-injured patients with aphasia and children with specific language-learning deficits have shown the dependence of language comprehension on auditory processing abilities, i.e. the detection of temporal order. An impairment of temporal-order perception can be simulated by time reversing segments of the speech signal. In our study, we investigated how different ...

This paper examines the impact that non-native speakers have had on the structure of Picard, a GalloRomance language spoken in northern France and southern Belgium. Focusing on neuter subjects, a construction that is characterized by a more complex system than the equivalent form in French (the other language spoken by all Picard speakers), we compare the systems used by native and non-native s...

This study investigates how native prosodic systems and second language (L2) learning experience shape non-native tone production. Speakers from tone language backgrounds (native Cantonese and Mandarin speakers [CS & MS]) and non-tone language backgrounds (English monolinguals [ES] and English speakers with Mandarin learning experience [EM]) produced the six Cantonese tones in an imitation task...

This paper investigates whether the importance and use of word-initial and word-final information in spoken-word recognition is dependent on whether one is listening in a native or a non-native language and on the presence of background noise. Native English and non-native Dutch and Finnish listeners participated in an English word recognition experiment, where either a word’s onset or offset w...

Previous work has shown that languages differ in their articulatory setting, the postural configuration that the vocal tract articulators tend to adopt when they are not engaged in any active speech gesture, and that this posture might be specified as part of the phonological knowledge speakers have of the language. This study tests whether the articulatory setting of a language can be acquired...

Implicit, abstract knowledge acquired through language experience can alter cortical processing of complex auditory signals. To isolate prelexical processing of linguistic tones (i.e., pitch variations that convey part of word meaning), a novel design was used in which hybrid stimuli were created by superimposing Thai tones onto Chinese syllables (tonal chimeras) and Chinese tones onto the same...

This study explores how experience with native language (L1) diphthongs influences the assimilation of non-native diphthongs. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of L1 attunement, native Australian English (AusE) speakers categorized and rated the Danish diphthongs, in addition to the monophthongs, in relation to their entire native vowel inventory. Short Danish vowels were assimilated to b...

We created a novel paradigm to investigate phonological processing in sign and asked how age of acquisition (AoA) may affect it. Participants indicated which of two signs was more phonologically similar to a target, and estimated the strength of the resemblance with a mouse click along a continuous scale. We manipulated AoA by testing deaf native and non-native signers, and hearing L2 signers a...