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Abstract:
Highly proficient German users of English as a second language, and native speakers of American
English, listened to nonsense sequences and responded whenever they detected an embedded
English word. The responses of both groups were equivalently facilitated by preceding context that
both by English and by German phonotactic constraints forced a boundary at word onset (e.g.,
lecture was easier to detect in moinlecture than in gorklecture, and wish in yarlwish than in
plookwish. The American L1 speakers’ responses were strongly facilitated, and the German
listeners’ responses almost as strongly facilitated, by contexts that forced a boundary in English but
not in German thrarshlecture, glarshwish. The German listeners’ responses were significantly
facilitated also by contexts that forced a boundary in German but not in English )moycelecture,
loitwish, while L1 listeners were sensitive to acoustic boundary cues in these materials but not to
the phonotactic sequences. The pattern of results suggests that proficient L2 listeners can acquire the
phonotactic probabilities of an L2 and use them to good effect in segmenting continuous speech, but
at the same time they may not be able to prevent interference from L1 constraints in their L2
listening.
