Multilingual Linguistic Experience on the

This study investigated the effect of multilingual linguistic experience on the perception of Japanese durational contrast by learners of Japanese as a foreign language at the basic level. Five monolingual and five multilingual learners listened to recorded sentences c)ntaining the utterances /iken / or /ikken / and were asked to identify which of the two utterances was employed in each sentence. Amongst the multilingual subjects, some spoke languages that utilize segmental durations phonemically, whilst some spoke languages that did not. Although the results indicated superior perceptual performance by multilingual learners over monolingual learners, there was no significant difference between the two types of multilingual subjects. The results support the hypothesis that not only specific but also non-specific, broadened linguistic experience can result in increased perceptual performance. Other results and their implications are discussed. (Contains 29 references.) (MDM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ****,..."4..**.e.A:.A**************************************************** U) t