title: Discrimination of native and non-native vowel contrasts in bilingual Turkish-German and monolingual German children: Insight from the Mismatch Negativity ERP component.
abstract: The development of native-like memory traces for foreign phonemes can be measured by using the Mismatch Negativity (MMN), a component of the auditory event-related potential. Previous studies have shown that the MMN is sensitive to changes in neural organization depending on language experience. Here we measured the MMN response in 5-6year-old monolingual German and bilingual Turkish-German kindergarten children growing up in Germany. MMN was investigated to a German vowel contrast and to a vowel contrast that exists in Turkish and in German. The results show that compared to a German control group, the MMN response is less robust in Turkish-German children to the German vowel contrast. The response to the contrast that exists in both languages does not differ between groups. Overall, the results suggest that the Turkish-German children have not yet fully acquired the German phonetic inventory despite living in Germany since birth and being immersed in a German-speaking environment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz, Germany. tanja.rinker@uni-konstanz.de
authors.forename: Tanja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rinker
authors.forename: Paavo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Alku
authors.forename: Sibylle
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brosch
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kiefer
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005072:Evoked Potentials, Auditory / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D014421:Turkey