Phonetic and Lexical Encoding of Tone in Cantonese Heritage Speakers.
Lang Speech
; 66(3): 652-677, 2023 Sep.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36172645
ABSTRACT
Heritage speakers contend with at least two languages the less dominant first language (L1), that is, the heritage language, and the more dominant second language (L2). In some cases, their L1 and L2 bear striking phonological differences. In the current study, we investigate Toronto-born Cantonese heritage speakers and their maintenance of Cantonese lexical tone, a linguistic feature that is absent from English, the more dominant L2. Across two experiments, Cantonese heritage speakers were tested on their phonetic/phonological and lexical encoding of tone in Cantonese. Experiment 1 was an AX discrimination task with varying inter-stimulus intervals (ISIs), which revealed that heritage speakers discriminated tone pairs with disparate pitch contours better than those with shared pitch contours. Experiment 2 was a medium-term repetition priming experiment, designed to extend the findings of Experiment 1 by examining tone representations at the lexical level. We observed a positive correlation between English dominance and priming in tone minimal pairs that shared contours. Thus, while increased English dominance does not affect heritage speakers' phonological-level representations, tasks that require lexical access suggest that heritage Cantonese speakers may not robustly and fully distinctively encode Cantonese tone in lexical memory.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Percepção da Fala
/
Fonética
Tipo de estudo:
Prognostic_studies
Limite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Lang Speech
Ano de publicação:
2023
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Canadá
País de publicação:
ENGLAND
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ESCOCIA
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GB
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GREAT BRITAIN
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INGLATERRA
/
REINO UNIDO
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SCOTLAND
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UK
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UNITED KINGDOM