Robustness of phonolexical representations relates to phonetic flexibility for difficult second language sound contrasts

• Autores: Miguel Llompart, Eva Reinisch
• Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 22, Nº 5, 2019, págs. 1085-1100
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Listening to speech entails adapting to vast amounts of variability in the signal. The present study examined the relationship between flexibility for adaptation in a second language (L2) and robustness of L2 phonolexical representations. Phonolexical encoding and phonetic flexibility for German learners of English were assessed by means of a lexical decision task containing nonwords with sound substitutions and a distributional learning task, respectively. Performance was analyzed for an easy (/i/-/ɪ/) and a difficult contrast (/ε/-/æ/, where /æ/ does not exist in German). Results showed that for /i/-/ɪ/ listeners were quite accurate in lexical decision, and distributional learning consistently triggered shifts in categorization. For /ε/-/æ/, lexical decision performance was poor but individual participants’ scores related to performance in distributional learning: the better learners were in their lexical decision, the smaller their categorization shift. This suggests that, for difficult L2 contrasts, rigidity at the phonetic level relates to better lexical performance.