Bilingual children’s processing of phonological rules

Languages differ in their phonology, e.g. in the sounds they use and in the processes that modify these sounds across words. For instance, in English, /t/ can sometimes be changed into /p/: “sweet boy” can be pronounced as “sweep boy”, whereas in French, /t/ can sometimes be changed into /d/: “botte verte” can be pronounced as “bodde verte”). In previous work we showed that 6-year-old French-English bilingual children have implicit knowledge about these processes and do not confuse which one applies in which language. For instance, they recognize “botte” in “bodde verte” but not in “boppe verte” (the English process applied in French). In the present project we ask how being exposed to foreign-accented speech may influence their word recognition. That is, given that in bilingual families one or both parents may speak their partners’ language but with a foreign accent, bilingual children may be more lenient when tested on foreign-accented speech, and hence recognize words in one language even have they have undergone a process from the other language (as in “boppes vertes”). This experiment will be implemented on an iPad and run in a bilingual school in Paris. The student should have some technical skills, as well as an interest in language acquisition. A background in (psycho-)linguistics is not required.