Syntactic Cues Take Precedence Over Distributional Cues in Native and Non-Native Speech Segmentation

Native French listeners and English-speaking second-language learners of French completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment. Half the stimuli contained the pivotal consonant /t/, a frequent word onset but infrequent liaison consonant, and half contained /z/, a frequent liaison consonant but rare word onset.

In the adjective–noun condition (permitting liaison), participants heard a consonant-initial target (e.g., le petit tatoué; le fameux zélé ) that was temporarily ambiguous at the segmental level with a vowel-initial competitor (e.g., le petit [t]athée; le fameux [z]élu ); in the noun–adjective condition (not permitting liaison), they heard a consonant-initial target (e.g., le client tatoué; le Français zélé ) that was not temporarily ambiguous with a vowel-initial competitor (e.g., le client [*t]athée; le Français [*z]élu ).