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Bilinguals play by the rules : perceptual compensation for assimilation in late L 2-learners

Phonological rules introduce variation in word forms that listeners have to compensate for. We previously showed (Darcy 2002; Darcy et al., to appear) that compensation for phonological variation in perception is driven by languagespecific mechanisms. In particular, English speakers compensate more for place assimilation than for voicing assimilation, whereas the reverse holds for French speakers. English indeed has a rule of place assimilation, whereas French has a rule of voicing assimilation. In the present study, we explore the patterns of compensation for assimilation in English learners of French and in French learners of English. We use the same design and stimuli as Darcy (2006), Darcy et al. (to appear); in this design, listeners are engaged in a word detection task on sentences containing occurrences of both place assimilation and voicing assimilation. We test British English and American English learners of French as well as French learners of American English on both their native language (L1) and their second language (L2). The results show that beginners interpret their L2 in exactly the same way as their L1: they apply the native compensation pattern to both languages. Advanced learners, by contrast, succeed in compensating for the non-native assimilation rule in their L2, while keeping the native compensation pattern for L1; as little or no interference from L2 on L1 is observed for these learners, we conclude that two separate systems of compensation for phonological processes can co-exist. I. Darcy, S. Peperkamp and E. Dupoux 2