Minimal-pair word learning by bilingual toddlers: the Catalan /e/-/ɛ/ contrast revisited

Abstract

Twelve-month-old bilingual and monolingual infants show comparable phonetic discrimination skills for vowels belonging to their native language/s. However, Catalan–Spanish bilingual toddlers, but not Catalan monolinguals, appear insensitive to a vowel mispronunciation in familiar words involving the Catalan–Specific /e/-/ɛ/ contrast. Here bilingual and monolingual toddlers were tested in a challenging minimal-pair word learning task involving that contrast (i.e., [bepi]-[bɛpi]). Both groups succeeded, suggesting that bilinguals can successfully use their phonetic categories to phonologically encode novel words. It is argued that bilinguals’ impoverished vowel representations in familiar words might be the result of experiential input factors (e.g., cognate words and mispronunciations due to accented speech).