The unbalanced effect of bilingualism: the role of the dominant language on syllable segmentation by Parisian French and American English bilingual hearers
Résumé
This study deals with the segmentation of French and English pseudo-words according to the dominant language of the hearer (American English/Parisian French). The goal of this experiment is to validate the hypothesis that French dominant hearers perceive the syllabification of 'CVCV English words (i.e. ['tɪmi]) as */'CV-CV/ ("ti-my") as they would do for CVCV French words) unlike English dominant hearers who tend to prefer /'CVC-V/ or /'CVC-CV/ answers ("tim-y" or "tim-my"). Our results are consistent with this hypothesis, and support the idea that for bilingual hearers, perception of syllabification may be driven by their dominant language rather their their mother tongue.
Loading...