Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Dupoux, E., & Gout, A. (2000). Electrophysiological 
correlates of phonological processing: a cross-linguistic study. Journal of 
Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 635-647. 

It is well-known that speech perception is deeply affected by the phoneme
categories of the native language. Recent studies have found that
phonotactic rules, that is, constraints on the co-occurrence of phonemes
within words, also have a considerable impact on speech perception
routines. For example, syllabic structures in Japanese do not allow
(non-nasal) coda consonants. When presented with stimuli that violate this
constraint, as in /ebzo/, Japanese adults report that they hear a /u/
between consonants, that is, /ebuzo/. We examine this phenomenon using
event-related potentials (ERPs) on French and Japanese participants in
order to study how and when the phonotactic properties of the native
language affect speech perception routines. Trials using four similar
precursor stimuli were presented followed by a test stimulus that was
either identical or different depending on the presence or absence of an
epenthetic vowel /u/ between two consonants (for example, "ebuzo ebuzo
ebuzo - ebzo"). Behavioral results confirm that Japanese, unlike French
participants, are not able to discriminate between identical and deviant
trials. In ERPs, three mismatch responses were recorded in French
participants. These responses were either absent or significantly weaker
for Japanese. In particular a component similar in latency and topography
to the mismatch negativity (MMN) was recorded for French, but not for
Japanese participants. Our results suggest that the impact of phonotactics
takes place early in speech processing and support models of speech
perception that postulate that the input signal is directly parsed into the
native language phonological format. We speculate that such a fast
computation of a phonological representation should facilitate lexical
access, especially in degraded conditions.