On the Adult's Ability to Acquire Phonology

Abstract

During the preparation phase of research designed to test the strong version of the critical period hypothesis, the author noted a marked discrepancy between the perceptive and the productive performance of several English-French bilinguals who had evaluated the text instruments. Although these bilinguals spoke French with an English accent,; most were able to match the performance of native-speaking francophones on the initial version of the Foreign Accent Recognition Test especially prepared for the 1979 study. The inspiration for the research described here was drawn from the apparent asymmetry observed in the input and output of these fluent bilinguals. The Foreign Accent Recognition Test was administered to Englishspeaking students who were advanced learners of French and who had acquired their second language as adults. Although all Ss spoke French with traces of foreign accent, the investigator wished to know to what extent they could match the perceptive performance of native-speaking francophones. To assess the relevance of competence in L2 as a variable, another group of English-speaking adults who were less advanced in French was tested. The results of these follow-up studies are interpreted as tentative support for a dual model of linguistic competence. They also constitute, for the author, grounds for re-examining biological constraints in adult language learning as a psychomotor rather than psycholinguistic problem. When perusing the literature on child language, one notes with interest that learning ability is rarely discussed as a significant variable. Whether advocates of a species specific language acquisition device or proponents of a cognitive processing theory, first language acquisitionists accept without question that children possess the capacity to acquire native-like proficiency in their language at all linguistic levels. Although it has been shown that children vary in initial rate of acquisition and in the time at which they begin to use language systematically, these differences have not attracted serious attention in studies on first language acquisition. Our view of the child as indistinguishable from his peers with respect to language learning ability may change of course as a result of work conducted in the areas of pragmatics and individual