Using the lens of phonetic experience to resolve phonological forms

This special issue of the journal contains a selection of papers developed from original presentations at the 2nd ASA Special Workshop on Speech with the theme of Cross-Language Speech Perception and Variations in Linguistics Experience. The papers represent major theoretical and empirical contributions that converge upon the common theme of how our perception of phonological forms is guided and constrained by our experience with the phonetic details of the language(s) we have learned. Several of the papers presented here offer key theoretical advances and lay out novel or newly expanded frameworks that increase our understanding of speech perception as shaped by universal, first language acquisition abilities, general learning mechanisms, and language-specific perceptual tuning. Others offer careful empirical investigations of language learning by simultaneous bilinguals, as well as by later second language learners, and discuss their new findings in light of the theoretical proposals. The work presented here will provide a stimulating and thoughtful impetus toward further progress on the fundamentally significant issue of understanding of how language experience shapes our perception of phonetic details and phonological structure in spoken language. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.