Consonant and vowel perception and production: Early English-French bilinguals and English monolinguals

Abstract

This study is a comparative analysis of the English phonetic systems of 10 fluent adult English-French bilinguals who acquired their two languages prior to age 8 and who were English-dominant, and of 10 adult English monolinguals. The objective of the study was to determine whether or not early English-dominant bilinguals perceive and produce speech as English monolinguals do. Discrimination and identification tests of synthetic /d-t/ and /i-I/ continua and speech production tests revealed that the bilinguals' discrimination and production of /d/ and /t/ and their production of /I/ did not differ significantly from the monolinguals'. However, the bilinguals' identification of /d-t/ and /i-I/ and one aspect of their production of /i/ did differ significantly from that of the monolinguals. The present results indicate that early bilingualism can yield monolingual-like performance in at least one of the bilinguals' languages, but only with respect to certain aspects of the phonetic system. These findings are viewed in light of sound-class distinctions, the perception-production dichotomy, and bilingual phonetic transfer and restructuring. © 1989 Psychonomic Society, Inc.