Influence of Early and Late Academic Exposure to L2 on Perception of L1 and L2 Accent

Abstract

This paper explored the influence of early and late academic exposure to an L2 (English) on the perception of L1 (Bengali) and L2 (English) accent. Based on the perception of real and novel words in L1 and L2 contexts, 12 monolingual Bengali listeners and 12 monolingual Standard American English listeners judged the “nativelike” accent of 20 Bengali-English bilingual speakers (10 speakers had early and 10 had late academic exposure to an L2). In each stimulus category (i.e., real and novel), 2 words had trochaic and 2 words had iambic stress pattern. Except in the L1 novel context, speakers with early L2 exposure received higher “nativelike” accent ratings in both L1 and in L2. The two groups of bilinguals were comparable in the L1 novel context. Real words with trochaic stress pattern were perceived as more “nativelike” in both L1 and L2 contexts. The results suggest that the age of academic exposure to an L2 differentially interacts with the perception of L1 and L2 accent, and with perception based on the novelty of the stimuli. Cross-linguistic transfer alone might not always explain bilinguals’ linguistic behaviors. Active interplay of multiple social, linguistic, and physiological factors needs to be considered.