A new study is exploring how a person’s native language can influence the way the brain processes auditory words in a second language.
Because cues that signal the beginning and ending of words can differ from language to language, a person’s native language can provide misleading information when learning to segment a second language into words. Annie Tremblay, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Kansas, is trying to better understand the kinds of cues second language learners listen for when recognizing words in continuous speech. She also is studying how adaptive adult learners are in acquiring these new speech cues.
