Many studies have shown that bilinguals' accuracy in producing and perceiving a second language (L2) declines as their age of first exposure to the L2 increases. However, chronological age is typically confounded with other factors such as how much the native language (LI) is used and how long the L2 has been spoken. It is shown that both language use patterns and age influence performance in an L2. It appears that bilinguals' LI and L2 phonetic systems mutually influence one another. The interaction appears to occur at the level of position-sensitive allophones. Whether or not phonetic categories are established appears to depend on the perceived distance of an L2 sound from the closest LI sound. A bilingual's L2 categories may differ from those of monolinguals, however if the L2 sound for which a category has been formed is defined by a feature not exploited in the LI.
Cite as: Flege, J.E. (1998) Second-language learning: the role of subject and phonetic variables. Proc. ETRW on Speech Technology in Language Learning (STiLL), 1-8
@inproceedings{flege98_still,
author={James Emil Flege},
title={{Second-language learning: the role of subject and phonetic variables}},
year=1998,
booktitle={Proc. ETRW on Speech Technology in Language Learning (STiLL)},
pages={1--8}
}