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

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.