The unbalanced effect of bilingualism: the role of the dominant language on syllable segmentation by Parisian French and American English bilingual hearers

This study deals with the segmentation of French and English pseudo-words according to the dominant language of the hearer (American English/Parisian French). The goal of this experiment is to validate the hypothesis that French dominant hearers perceive the syllabification of 'CVCV English words (i.e. ['tɪmi]) as */'CV-CV/ ("ti-my") as they would do for CVCV French words) unlike English dominant hearers who tend to prefer /'CVC-V/ or /'CVC-CV/ answers ("tim-y" or "tim-my"). Our results are consistent with this hypothesis, and support the idea that for bilingual hearers, perception of syllabification may be driven by their dominant language rather their their mother tongue