To our knowledge only three studies have addressed the issue of remnants of the phonology of a language heard during early childhood (Au et al., 2002, Oh et al., 2003 and Tees and Werker, 1984). They suggest that some aspects of a language spoken or overheard during childhood and subsequently left in disuse subsist in adult relearners of the language. The first of these studies (Tees &Werker, 1984) involved English-speaking adults having been regularly exposed to Hindi during the first year or two of life (by having either lived in India or by having lived with a Hindi-speaking relative during this time period) and relearning this language in adulthood. Ten early exposure learners of Hindi and 18 first-time learners of Hindi were tested on a category-change discrimination task involving a retroflex–dental contrast characteristic of Hindi, place of articulation being the main distinctive feature of this contrast. The early exposed subjects showed an advantage in the discrimination of the contrast relative to first-time learners of Hindi. The two other studies,