Recognition of spoken words in L2 speech using L1 probabilistic phonotactics: Evidence from Cantonese-English bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigates whether Cantonese-English bilingual listeners make implicit use of their L1 (Cantonese) probabilistic phonotactic information in recognizing spoken words in L2 (English) speech. Previous research in different languages demonstrated that probabilistic phonotactics could serve as a cue to locate the possible word boundary in continuous speech. The use of these kinds of information in L1 may also be used in L2 listening for fluent bilingual listeners. In the present study, a word-spotting experiment was conducted to answer this empirical question. The results revealed that the Cantonese-English bilingual listeners might not make use of all, but some of, the information of L1 probabilistic phonotactics in recognizing spoken words in L2 speech.