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Part of
Perspectives on Input, Evidence, and Exposure in Language Acquisition: Studies in honour of Susanne E. Carroll
Edited by Lindsay Hracs
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 69] 2024
► pp. 191–224

Chapter 8
First exposure to Russian word forms by adult English speakers

Disentangling language‑specific and language‑universal factors

| Newcastle University
| Newcastle University
| Newcastle University

How language learners segment (recognise and store words) in the speech stream has typically been explored with children (Jusczyk 1997). Researchers have only recently begun to examine how adults segment an unfamiliar natural language after first exposure without instruction (Gullberg et al. 2010; Gullberg et al. 2012; Carroll 2012, 2013, 2014; Shoemaker & Rast 2013). We report on a study of how 28 English-speaking adults begin to segment words after hearing them in fluent Russian during four sessions. The results showed that segmentation improved significantly over time. Segmentation patterns reflected the influence of English phonotactics and sensitivity to weak-strong stress. We conclude that beyond native language bias, adults deploy the segmentation mechanisms similar to those children use.

Keywords: segmentation, first exposure, phonotactics, prosody, implicit learning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Babies and the speech stream
    • 2.2L2 learners and the speech stream
    • 2.3First exposure studies
  • 3.Research questions
    • 3.1Russian
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Design
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Stimuli
      • 4.3.1Target stimuli
      • 4.3.2Generalizable distractors
      • 4.3.3Non-generalizable distractors
    • 4.4Input phase
    • 4.5Tasks
      • 4.5.1Word recognition task
      • 4.5.2Forced-choice task
      • 4.5.3Shared words identification task
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Shared words identification task
    • 5.2Participants increasing ability to detect words
    • 5.3Accuracy in detecting Russian/English phonotactics vs. Russian-only
    • 5.4Accuracy in strong-weak vs. weak-strong stressed Russian words
    • 5.5Participants preference for disyllabic over monosyllabic words
    • 5.6Participants generalization of phonotactic properties
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Session
    • 6.2Phonotactics
    • 6.3Stress
    • 6.4Length of syllables within a word
    • 6.5Generalization
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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