Lexical representation of Mandarin tones in second language learners

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that a word’s phonological similarity to other words (i.e., phonological neighborhood) can influence its recognition. However, most research concerning lexical representations has been observed for neighbors based on segmental overlap, and little is known about such effects with suprasegmentals such as Mandarin tones. In the present study, two experiments were conducted with forty L2 listeners and 40 native speakers to examine how tone neighborhood density influences Mandarin spoken word recognition. In Experiment 1, speed and accuracy from both groups’ performance in an auditory lexical task were influenced by tone neighborhood density (i.e., fewer words were recognized from dense tone neighborhoods than from sparse tone neighborhoods). However, L2 listeners’ performance was inferior to native listeners’. In Experiment 2, form priming patterns showed that reliable facilitation was observed only when the prime and the target were identical, while monosyllabic Mandarin words differing only in tone failed to speed the response to the target. In addition, only L2 listeners showed an increase in RTs to respond to the target when it was preceded by tone overlap primes. The results of these experiments demonstrate that tone neighborhood is an important factor in L2 Mandarin spoken word recognition.