Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/42980

The present research has examined how native English speakers and L2 speakers of different levels of language experience make use of the cues of syllable duration and pause to segment words. Selected groups of native English speakers, Japanese speakers with extensive experience of English, and Japanese speakers whose experience of English was limited took part in the monitoring task. The results suggest that the native English speakers use syllable duration to segment words, while the groups of Japanese speakers tend to segment words by marking the pauses. The results also indicate that the Japanese speakers with more extensive experience of English segment words more accurately and more quickly than the Japanese speakers whose experience of English is less, or limited. We can therefore say that L2 experience affects the speech processing of the target language, but that word segmentation strategy appears to be language specific.