Research

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The main research program I have undertaken is couched within phonetic and psycholinguistic approaches to bilingualism. It aims to provide new insights on how bilinguals perceive speech and process words. It is well established that the sound system of each language influences not only how adult bilinguals produce words, but also how they perceive speech and recognize spoken words. The precise nature of this influence, however, has yet to be understood and adequately explained. The objectives of the research program I have undertaken are:



Much of the research I have conducted sheds light on these issues by examining adult second-language learners’ perception of prosodic information (an under-investigated area of second-language research), focusing on the use of intonational cues in speech segmentation and on the use of lexical stress in speech perception and spoken word recognition.

Selected Papers