Interactions between the Native and Second-language Phonetic Systems

Many studies in the past decade have shown that "earlier is better" as far as learning a second language (L2) is concerned. That is, individuals who began learning their L2 in late adolescence or early adulthood ("late bilinguals") usually resemble native speakers of the L2 less than individuals who began learning their L2 in childhood ("early bilinguals") do. Early bilinguals have been shown to resemble L2 native speakers to a greater extent than late bilinguals in terms of sensitivity to the grammatical properties of the L2 (Flege, Yeni-Komshian & Liu 1999; DeKeyser 2000) as well as in terms of the online processing of L2 sentences (Liu et al. 1992; McDonald 2000; Guillelmon & Grosjean 2001). Other studies have shown similar differences in the production and perception of L2 speech. For example, early bilinguals generally have milder foreign accents in the L2 than late bilinguals do (Flege et al. 1995a; Flege, Yeni-Komshian & Liu 1999). Also, early bilinguals have been found to produce and perceive L2 vowels more like L2 native speakers than late bilinguals do (Munro et al. 1996; Flege 1992; Flege, MacKay & Meador 1999; Piske et al. in press; Flege et al. submitted), to produce and perceive L2 consonants more accurately than late bilinguals do (Flege 1991; Flege et al. 1995b; MacKay, Meador & Flege 2001; MacKay, Flege, Piske & Schirru 2001), and to recognize L2 words presented in noise more effectively (Meador et al. 2000).