Speech segmentation in native French and a second language

The speech signal being continuous, a segmentation step is necessary to recognize the spoken words. We examine different indices likely to facilitate segmentation: lexical indices and statistical indices, syntactic nature of words, presence of intonational rise, in native or non-native French-speaking listeners. We are also interested in the factors that influence second language learning, in particular the role of spelling and inter-speaker variability in memorization and pronunciation of learned vocabulary.