Korean‐English bilinguals’ perception of phonetic contrasts in their two languages.

Abstract

Korean speakers are known to find English /r/‐/l/ difficult to discriminate, and English speakers have trouble discriminating Korean voicing contrasts. We tested Korean‐English bilinguals’ perception of these difficult phonetic contrasts to examine the effects of age of acquisition and language dominance on bilinguals’ perception in their two languages. All bilingual participants were native Korean speakers but varied in age of English acquisition. Some reported English to be their dominant language, while others were Korean‐dominant. Participants completed a 2AFC task in which they were asked to click on one out of a pair of pictures. On key trials the pictures formed a minimal pair (e.g., rock versus lock). The same task was completed once in English (key items contained the /r/‐/l/ contrast) and once in Korean (key items contained the plain versus tense voicing contrast). Earlier exposure to English led to greater accuracy and faster response on the English task. However, neither age of acquisition nor language dominance affected performance on the Korean task. These results suggest that earlier exposure to a second language improves perception in that language, but that loss of dominance in a first language does not impair phonetic processing of that language. [Work supported by NIH#1R03HD048538 to JM.]