Our working hypothesis is that whenever you listen to a speech sound, it is recoded into what we call a phonological code , that is an abstract representation that is specifically tailored for the need of one's maternal language. S peech sounds are highly variable. We have investigated this issue by studying adaptation to highly compressed speech. We are exploring the possibility that while some mechanism for speech normalization are acoustically based, universal, and present in the newborn, others are language-dependent, and use knowledge acquired about the phonological properties of the maternal language. Bilingualism and plasticity.
Bilingualism raises interesting questions regarding the plasticity of higher brain functions.
We are studying these issues with psycholinguistic methods and brain imagery in different bilingual populations. We are studying the impact of age of acquisition, degree of final proficiency, and structural distance between languages. To print or preview a pdf file, use Acrobat Reader . New evidence for prelexical phonological processing in word recognition. A typological study of stress 'deafness'. to appear in Labphon 7 pdf , ps .