Phonological Processing in Kyrgyz-Russian Bilinguals

October 25, 2013

Abstract: It is usually accepted that before a certain age, children can perfectly acquire any human language. After this age, however, the child will only ever learn a new language imperfectly; that is, she will forever be a non-native speaker. This age is referred to as the critical period, and researchers liken it to other stages of maturational development (e.g. puberty). Most theories of the critical period are notably binary: before the critical period, languages are learned natively; after the critical period, languages are learned non-natively. However, it might not be so simple.

 Previous work has shown that bilinguals from a very young age do not process sounds as the equivalent of two monolingual speakers. On this view, bilinguals process phonemic contrasts optimally for only one of their two languages: whether it involves lexical stress (Dupoux et al. 2010; Dupoux et al. 2008), syllable structure (Cutler et al. 1992; Cutler et al. 1988), or segmental contrasts (Sebastián-Gallés et al. 2005; Sebastián-Gallés & Soto-Faraco 1999). The core claim of these studies is the same: no matter how native-like the speaker appears to be in each language, bilinguals are never truly “balanced” between the languages.

 What these studies do not agree on, however, is what the basis is for asymmetrical experimental performance. That is, why should a bilingual process contrasts better in language A or language B? Some have claimed it has to do with language preference, others say it relates to the language spoken by the mother, and still others assert that exposure before age four is the best predictor. The proposed study aims to shed light on this outstanding question by investigating phonological processing in a large group of highly balanced Kyrgyz-Russian bilinguals in Kyrgyzstan.

Bio: Joshua Meyer is currently a Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Arizona. His research interests lie in bilingualism and psycholinguistics, especially in phonological processing.  Josh’s methods are mainly experimental, using data from behavioral production and perception studies. 

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