Triggering a principle of phonemic acquisition

Assessing L2 phonemic acquisition: A normalization-independent method?

This paper aims at addressing the issues that emerge when attempting to analyse the acquisition of L2 vowels: studies usually embed vowels in the same /hVd/ template (e.g. Hillenbrand [14], Ferragne [10], Clopper [9]) in order to reduce coarticulatory effects, and the number of occurrences of each vowel is carefully controlled in order to comply with normalization constraints (e.g. Lobanov [17]...

Perception and Production in the Acquisition of L2 Phonemic Contrasts

This paper reports data from a pilot project that is part of an ongoing study investigating the second-language (L2) acquisition of phonemic contrasts. Our focus will be on the acquisition of the English /s/ /š/ contrast by native speakers of Japanese and Korean. These native language backgrounds were chosen because Japanese and Korean employ the sounds in question as allophones of the same pho...

Neural attunement processes in infants during the acquisition of a language-specific phonemic contrast.

To elucidate the developmental neural attunement process in the language-specific phonemic repertoire, cerebral hemodynamic responses to a Japanese durational vowel contrast were measured in Japanese infants using near-infrared spectroscopy. Because only relative durational information distinguishes this particular vowel contrast, both first and second language learners have difficulties in acq...

Second Language Acquisition and the Subset Principle

In this paper, I examine the claim that the Subset Principle is not operative in (adult) second language acquisition. It has been suggested that the Subset Principle is available to first language learners, but not to second language learners, and that this difference is responsible, at least in part, for the fossilization that seems to be characteristic of second language acquisition. I intend...

Differential Acquisition of Phonemic Contrasts by Infant Word-learners: Does Production Recapitulate Perception?