Syllabic tone articulation influences the identification and use of words during Chinese sentence reading: Evidence from ERP and eye movement recordings

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined the contribution of articulation-specific features to visual word recognition during the reading of Chinese. In spoken Standard Chinese, a syllable with a full tone can be tone-neutralized through sound weakening and pitch contour change, and there are two types of two-character compound words with respect to their articulation variation. One type requires articulation of a full tone for each constituent character, and the other requires a full-and a neutral-tone articulation for the first and second characters, respectively. Words of these two types with identical first characters were selected and embedded in sentences. Native speakers of Standard Chinese were recruited to read the sentences. In Experiment 1, the individual words of a sentence were presented serially at a fixed pace while eventrelated potentials were recorded. This resulted in less-negative N100 and anterior N250 amplitudes and in more-negative N400 amplitudes when targets contained a neutral tone. Complete sentences were visible in Experiment 2, and eye movements were recorded while participants read. Analyses of oculomotor activity revealed shorter viewing durations and fewer refixations on-and fewer regressive saccades totarget words when their second syllable was articulated with a neutral rather than a full tone. Together, the results indicate that readers represent articulation-specific word properties, that these representations are routinely activated early during the silent reading of Chinese sentences, and that the representations are also used during later stages of word processing.

Visually complex foveal words increase the amount of parafoveal information acquired

“…Yan, Luo, and Inhoff (2014) found that neutral-tone words with shorter syllable articulation duration were gazed at more briefly than full-tone words during the silent reading of Chinese sentences. The faster access of neutral-tone words does not imply that their lexical processing requires less effort, because in a follow-up study, Luo et al (2015) reported that N400 peaks were more negative for neutraltone words, suggesting processing difficulty. This agrees with the present study showing that long fixation does not necessarily indicate high lexical difficulty.…”

From Lexical Tone to Lexical Stress: A Cross-Language Mediation Model for Cantonese Children Learning English as a Second Language

“…Another possible shared phonological component might be the phonological encoding of suprasegmental information. To date, evidence suggests that lexical tones ( Singh et al, 2015 ; Tong et al, 2015b ; Choi et al, 2016a ; Luo et al, 2016 ) and lexical stress ( Ashby and Clifton, 2005 ; Arciuli et al, 2010 ; Goswami et al, 2013 ) are encoded as essential components of phonological representations in Chinese and English, respectively. For example, in a test of toddlers’ sensitivity to mispronunciations of tones, Chinese toddlers were very sensitive to lexical tones in a word recognition paradigm ( Singh et al, 2015 ).…”

Lexical prosody beyond first-language boundary: Chinese lexical tone sensitivity predicts English reading comprehension

“…However, the importance of Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity in word reading was shown in a study in which Cantonese lexical tone sensitivity predicted unique variance in Chinese word reading in Cantonese-English bilingual children (McBride-Chang et al, 2008). In relation to this finding, a recent eye-tracking study reported that oculomotor measures sensitive to lexical processing were influenced by tonal changes (Luo, Yan, Yan, Zhou, & Inhoff, 2015). Specifically, this study found lower re-fixation probabilities and shorter first pass viewing durations for neutral tone targets compared to full tone targets.…”