Childhood experience with a language seems to help adult learners speak it with a more native-like accent. Can analogous benefits be found beyond phonology? This study focused on adult learners of Spanish who had spoken Spanish as their native language before age 7 and only minimally, if at all, thereafter until they began to re-learn Spanish around age 14 years. They were compared with native speakers, childhood overhearers, and typical late-second-language (L2)-learners of Spanish. Both childhood speakers and overhearers spoke Spanish with a more native-like accent than typical late-L2-learners. On grammar measures, childhood speakers-although far from native-like-reliably outperformed childhood overhearers as well as typical late-L2-learners. These results suggest that while simply overhearing a language during childhood could help adult learners speak it with a more native-like phonology, speaking a language regularly during childhood could help re-learners use it with more native-like grammar as well as phonology.

中文翻译：

---

拯救一种童年语言

童年时期的语言经验似乎有助于成年学习者用更像母语的口音说这门语言。除了音韵学之外，还能找到类似的好处吗？这项研究的重点是在 7 岁之前以西班牙语作为母语的成人西班牙语学习者，此后直到他们在 14 岁左右开始重新学习西班牙语之前，如果有的话，也只是最低限度的。他们与母语人士、童年偷听者和典型的后期第二语言 (L2) 西班牙语学习者进行了比较。与典型的 L2 后期学习者相比，童年说话者和旁听者说西班牙语时的口音更像母语。在语法测量方面，童年说话者——尽管远非母语者——可靠地胜过童年偷听者以及典型的后期二语学习者。