Cross-linguistic Perceptual Differences Emerge from the Lexicon

The anatomy and function of the peripheral auditory system differs from person to person (sometimes to a clinical degree), but such differences are probably not correlated with linguistic knowledge. For example, the distribution of French speakers’ peripheral auditory sensitivities are probably no different from the distribution of auditory sensitivities of speakers of any other language. That is, there is no reason to expect psychophysical thresholds for simple or complex stimuli to vary