Vowel perception and production in Turkish children acquiring L2 German

Previous studies Influence of L1 categories is said to be less strong in early learners as compared to late learners: Less foreign accent, better production, better perception (1, 2); they are just like monolinguals (8) in some tasks. The influence of L1 might be more variable in early learners (3, 4) because in children, phonetic categories are still in formation (9). But it is sometimes still strong enough to make them different from monolinguals: Early and intensive exposure to a second language is not enough to build native-like phonemic categories (5), to perform like monolinguals in discrimination (3,4,6,7) or production (1). Incomplete picture: early bilingual children? • Very little is known about the development of categories in children who learn an L2 early (we know only the „end-state“ as adult early learners) • If early bilinguals are different from (or just like?) monolinguals and from late bilinguals, when does it start to be so? Stimuli Method • oddball auditory categorization • nonwords presented in triads (48 „same“, 48 „change“) Stimuli • four contrasts Control: [a:]~[i:] Test: [e:]~[E], [i:]~[I] and [e:]~[i:] • recorded from 3 different speakers • all contrasts embedded in non-word syllables (k_k, p_p) Analysis • d’ sensitivity and Mann-Whitney U-test