The Role of Prosodic Information in L2 Speech Segmentation

Unlike written language, where word boundaries are often denoted by blank spaces (e.g., le_chat „the_cat‟), for spoken language, no single device allows for the reliable identification of word boundaries: words are typically uttered without a pause between them, and sound processes further blur word boundaries. A crucial challenge for second/foreign language (L2) learners is that the cues to word boundaries differ across languages. Thus, an English speaker‟s experience with her native language may prove misleading when attempting to segment speech in a new language such as French. L2 learners often can identify words in writing or when spoken in isolation, and yet they may fail to recognize them in continuous speech. To segment language into words, non-native listeners must know not only the word forms uttered by the speaker, but also the sound processes that apply at word boundaries and the factors regulating the application of these processes. One type of sound process that has been shown to play an important role in speech segmentation is prosodic prominence. For example, from the age of 7.5 months, English-acquiring infants use accented syllables to identify word-initial boundaries (e.g., Jusczyk & Aslin, 1995; Jusczyk, Houston, & Newsome, 1999). Young infants are also sensitive to higher-level prosodic information: in English, they can detect disruptions in intonational phrases at 4.5 months (e.g., Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1987; Jusczyk et al., 1992) and disruptions in phonological phrases at 9 months (e.g., Kemler-Nelson et al., 1989; Gerken, Jusczyk, & Mandel, 1994); and in French, they can detect phonological phrase boundaries at 13 months (Christophe et al., 2003). Adults have similarly been shown to use both accentual cues (e.g., in English: Cooper, Cutler, & Wales, 2002; Cutler & Butterfield, 1992; McQueen, Norris, & Cutler, 1994; Mattys, 2004; in French: Banel & Bacri, 1994) and higher-level prosodic cues (e.g., in French: Christophe et al., 2004; Welby, 2006; in Korean: Kim, 2004; Kim &