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

Abstract

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.