This study investigates whether listeners’ experience with a second language learned later in life affects their use of fundamental frequency (F0) as a cue to word boundaries in the segmentation of an artificial language (AL), particularly when the cues to word boundaries conflict between the first language (L1) and second language (L2). F0 signals phrase-final (and thus word-final) boundaries in French but word-initial boundaries in English. Participants were functionally monolingual French listeners, functionally monolingual English listeners, bilingual L1-English L2-French listeners, and bilingual L1-French L2-English listeners. They completed the AL-segmentation task with F0 signaling word-final boundaries or without prosodic cues to word boundaries (monolingual groups only). After listening to the AL, participants completed a forced-choice word-identification task in which the foils were either non-words or part-words. The results show that the monolingual French listeners, but not the monolingual English listeners, performed better in the presence of F0 cues than in the absence of such cues. Moreover, bilingual status modulated listeners’ use of F0 cues to word-final boundaries, with bilingual French listeners performing less accurately than monolingual French listeners on both word types but with bilingual English listeners performing more accurately than monolingual English listeners on non-words. These findings not only confirm that speech segmentation is modulated by the L1, but also newly demonstrate that listeners’ experience with the L2 (French or English) affects their use of F0 cues in speech segmentation. This suggests that listeners’ use of prosodic cues to word boundaries is adaptive and non-selective, and can change as a function of language experience.

Focus in French, typically conveyed by syntax (e.g., clefting) with prosody, can be signaled by prosody alone (contrastive pitch accents on the first syllable of focused constituents, cf. nuclear pitch accents, on the last nonreduced syllable of the Accentual Phrase) (Féry, 2001; Jun & Fougeron, 2000). Do French listeners, like L1-English listeners (Ito & Speer, 2008) use contrastive accents to anticipate upcoming referents? 20 French listeners completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment. Cross-spliced, amplitude-neutralized stimuli included context (1) and critical (2) sentences in a 2x2 design, with accent on object (nuclear/ contrastive) and person’s information status (new/ given) as within-subject variables (see (1)-(2)). Average amplitudes and durations for object words were 67 dB and 0.68 s for contrastive accents, and 63.8 dB and 0.56 s for nuclear accents, respectively. Mixed-effects models showed a significant effect of accent-by-information-status interaction on competitor fixation proportions in the post-disambiguation time window (p<0.05). Contrastive accents yielded lower competitor fixation proportions with a given person than with a new person, suggesting that contrastive accents constrain lexical competition in French. (1) Clique sur le macaRON de Marie-Hélène. (2) Puis clique sur le chocoLAT/ CHOcolat de Marie-Hélène/ Jean-Sébastien. (nuclear/contrastive accent, given/new person) ‘(Then) Click on the macaron/chocolate of Marie-Hélène/Jean-Sébastien.’

This study investigates whether syntactic cues take precedence over distributional cues in native and non-native speech segmentation by examining native and non-native speech segmentation in potential French-liaison contexts. Native French listeners and English-speaking second-language learners of French completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment. Half the stimuli contained the pivotal consonant /t/, a frequent word onset but infrequent liaison consonant, and half contained /z/, a frequent liaison consonant but rare word onset. In the adjective-noun condition (permitting liaison), participants heard a consonant-initial target (e.g., le petit tatoué; le fameux zélé) that was temporarily ambiguous at the segmental level with a vowel-initial competitor (e.g., le petit [t]athée; le fameux [z]élu); in the noun-adjective condition (not permitting liaison), they heard a consonant-initial target (e.g., le client tatoué; le Français zélé) that was not temporarily ambiguous with a vowel-initial competitor (e.g., le client [*t]athée; le Français [*z]élu). Growthcurve analyses revealed that syntactic context modulated both groups' fixations (noun-adjective > adjective-noun), and pivotal consonant modulated both groups' fixations (/t/ > /z/) only in the adjective-noun condition, with the effect of the consonant decreasing in more proficient French learners. These results suggest that syntactic cues override distributional cues in the segmentation of French words in potential liaison contexts.

Studies have shown that listeners segmenting unfamiliar languages transfer native-language (L1) segmentation cues. These studies, however, conflated L1 and recent linguistic exposure. The present study investigates the relative influences of L1 and recent linguistic exposure on the use of prosodic cues for segmenting an artificial language (AL). Participants were L1-French listeners, high-proficiency L2-French L1-English listeners, and L1-English listeners without functional knowledge of French. The prosodic cue assessed was F0 rise, which is word-final in French, but in English tends to be word-initial. 30 participants heard a 20-minute AL speech stream with word-final boundaries marked by F0 rise, and decided in a subsequent listening task which of two words (without word-final F0 rise) had been heard in the speech stream. The analyses revealed a marginally significant effect of L1 (all listeners) and, importantly, a significant effect of recent linguistic exposure (L1-French and L2-French listeners): accuracy increased with decreasing time in the US since the listeners’ last significant (3+ months) stay in a French-speaking environment. Interestingly, no effect of L2 proficiency was found (L2-French listeners).