Ling-Tea 3/14 – Rachel Borden, Jeffrey Klassen, Lance Williams

The acquisition of finely-tuned phonetic distinctions between languages is done at a very early age – certain phonetic contrasts may be learned before the age of 2 years.  This study examines the effect of early bilingual acquisition on adults’ production of sibilants in English and French as compared to sequential bilinguals, who began learning their second language after the age of two.  The results we found lead to interesting questions about the nature of a bilingual’s phonemic inventory(/ies) – how does a bilingual store phonemes in the mind?