Experience with a second language affects the use of fundamental frequency in speech segmentation

PLoS One. 2017 Jul 24;12(7):e0181709. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0181709. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

This study investigates whether listeners' experience with a second language learned later in life affects their use of fundamental frequency (F0) as a cue to word boundaries in the segmentation of an artificial language (AL), particularly when the cues to word boundaries conflict between the first language (L1) and second language (L2). F0 signals phrase-final (and thus word-final) boundaries in French but word-initial boundaries in English. Participants were functionally monolingual French listeners, functionally monolingual English listeners, bilingual L1-English L2-French listeners, and bilingual L1-French L2-English listeners. They completed the AL-segmentation task with F0 signaling word-final boundaries or without prosodic cues to word boundaries (monolingual groups only). After listening to the AL, participants completed a forced-choice word-identification task in which the foils were either non-words or part-words. The results show that the monolingual French listeners, but not the monolingual English listeners, performed better in the presence of F0 cues than in the absence of such cues. Moreover, bilingual status modulated listeners' use of F0 cues to word-final boundaries, with bilingual French listeners performing less accurately than monolingual French listeners on both word types but with bilingual English listeners performing more accurately than monolingual English listeners on non-words. These findings not only confirm that speech segmentation is modulated by the L1, but also newly demonstrate that listeners' experience with the L2 (French or English) affects their use of F0 cues in speech segmentation. This suggests that listeners' use of prosodic cues to word boundaries is adaptive and non-selective, and can change as a function of language experience.

MeSH terms

  • Acoustic Stimulation / methods
  • Adult
  • Auditory Perception / physiology
  • Cues
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Language
  • Male
  • Multilingualism*
  • Phonetics
  • Sound Spectrography / methods
  • Speech / physiology*
  • Speech Acoustics
  • Speech Perception / physiology*
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. BCS-1423905 awarded to Dr. Annie Tremblay. Support for this research also comes from a Language Learning small research grant awarded to Dr. Annie Tremblay, and a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research awarded to the fourth author (MB). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.