Listening to dialectal variation in a second-languagenot just unavoidable but necessary

Abstract

I examine the perceptual adjustment required for Basque accents, including a cross-linguistic approach that is inherent in the Basque language: Basque speakers are necessarily in close contact with Spanish and/or French. The phonemic contrast I focus on operates in Standard Basque, distinguishing between the laminal and apical voiceless alveolar fricatives /s¿/ and /s¿/. This contrast does not exist in either Spanish or French. I analyze whether different Basque speaking populations differentially perceive a specific neutralization by the Western dialect of Basque: alveo-laminal /s¿/ > alveo-apical /s¿/. Six groups of bilinguals, classified based on their L1 (Spanish or French), age of acquisition of Basque (simultaneous, early, or late bilinguals), and native dialect of Basque (Standard or Western), were tested in three tasks targeting different levels of representation.