Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching
Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching
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DOI：
10.3389/fcomm.2021.689423
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发表时间：
2021-06
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Eric Pelzl;Ellen F. Lau;Taomei Guo;R. Dekeyser
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作者：
Eric Pelzl;Ellen F. Lau;Taomei Guo;R. Dekeyser
从小讲没有词汇声调的语言的人通常会发现童年后很难掌握声调语言。越来越多的研究表明，这些第二语言（L2）使用者面临的大部分挑战与声调本身的识别无关，而是与声调和词汇单元之间的联系有关。仍然悬而未决的问题是，这些词汇绑定问题中有多少是编码问题（对声调与单词关系的不完整了解）与检索问题（无法在在线处理中访问这些关系）。虽然最近使用词汇决策任务的研究表明两者都可能发挥作用，但一个问题是词汇决策任务的失败可能反映出学习者对不是单词的东西缺乏信心，而不是对已知单词的非母语表示或处理。在这里，我们使用普通话的图片音系匹配范式提供补充证据，其中参与者决定口头目标是否与特定图像匹配，并同时进行事件相关电位 (ERP) 记录，以提供对 L1 和 L2 音调处理策略差异的潜在洞察。与词汇决策案例一样，我们发现高级 L2 学习者在准确识别声调不匹配目标（相对于元音不匹配目标）方面表现出明显的劣势。我们通过检查来自明确语气知识测试后的个体数据来探索不完整/不确定的词汇知识对这种性能劣势的贡献。结果表明，明确的声调词知识和置信度可以解释图片音系匹配中的部分但不是全部错误。对正确试验的 ERP 分析表明，L1 和 L2 反应的强度存在一些差异，但没有提供明确的证据来证明处理差异，从而解释 L2 音调的劣势。总之，这些结果与之前来自词汇决策任务的证据相一致，表明高级 L2 听众在词汇声调识别方面仍然存在困难，并表明这些困难反映了编码词汇声调知识和实时检索该知识方面的问题。
People who grow up speaking a language without lexical tones typically find it difficult to master tonal languages after childhood. Accumulating research suggests that much of the challenge for these second language (L2) speakers has to do not with identification of the tones themselves, but with the bindings between tones and lexical units. The question that remains open is how much of these lexical binding problems are problems of encoding (incomplete knowledge of the tone-to-word relations) vs. retrieval (failure to access those relations in online processing). While recent work using lexical decision tasks suggests that both may play a role, one issue is that failure on a lexical decision task may reflect a lack of learner confidence about what is not a word, rather than non-native representation or processing of known words. Here we provide complementary evidence using a picture-phonology matching paradigm in Mandarin in which participants decide whether or not a spoken target matches a specific image, with concurrent event-related potential (ERP) recording to provide potential insight into differences in L1 and L2 tone processing strategies. As in the lexical decision case, we find that advanced L2 learners show a clear disadvantage in accurately identifying tone mismatched targets relative to vowel mismatched targets. We explore the contribution of incomplete/uncertain lexical knowledge to this performance disadvantage by examining individual data from an explicit tone knowledge post-test. Results suggest that explicit tone word knowledge and confidence explains some but not all of the errors in picture-phonology matching. Analysis of ERPs from correct trials shows some differences in the strength of L1 and L2 responses, but does not provide clear evidence toward differences in processing that could explain the L2 disadvantage for tones. In sum, these results converge with previous evidence from lexical decision tasks in showing that advanced L2 listeners continue to have difficulties with lexical tone recognition, and in suggesting that these difficulties reflect problems both in encoding lexical tone knowledge and in retrieving that knowledge in real time.