Doctoral Dissertation Research: How Native Chinese Listeners and Second-Language Chinese Learners Process Tones in Word Recognition: An Eye-tracking Study

中文正在成为国际舞台上越来越重要的语言。因此，它已成为美国外语课程中普遍教授的语言，因此越来越多的以英语为母语的人正在学习汉语。重要的是，汉语和英语用来表达意思的信息类型不同：与英语不同，汉语使用词汇音调（即音高运动）来对比词义（例如，在汉语中，“ma”一词根据其词汇音调可以表示母亲、麻、马或骂）。汉语和英语的这种差异给英语学习者的汉语词汇识别带来了困难。本博士论文项目考察了母语为汉语的听者和精通英语的成人汉语学习者在语音信号随时间展开的过程中如何利用声调信息进行词识别。本研究将通过两个视觉世界眼动追踪实验，探讨母语为汉语的听者和英语学习者在词汇识别中使用声调信息的三个潜在差异：(1)他们对声调早期音高（高与低）的潜在不同敏感性；（ii）它们对这一早期音高的细粒度变化的潜在不同敏感性；（三）他们使用音调的完整音高轮廓的潜在不同能力。假设汉语和英语听者使用音调信息的时间过程存在差异，英语听者对早期细粒度的音高信息比汉语听者更敏感（表明对词汇音调的分类感知更少），但最终在使用音高轮廓信息进行单词识别方面存在更大的困难。本研究结果将有助于理解声调信息如何调节母语为汉语的听者和英语为汉语的学习者的词识别，并对汉语教学具有重要的指导意义。

Chinese is becoming an increasingly important language on the international scene. Accordingly, it has become a commonly taught language in foreign language programs in the United States, and thus an increasingly large number of native English speakers are learning Chinese. Importantly, Chinese and English differ in the types of information they use to convey meaning in words: unlike English, Chinese uses lexical tones (i.e., pitch movement) to contrast word meanings (e.g., in Chinese, the word "ma" can mean mother, hemp, horse, or scold depending on its lexical tone). This difference between Chinese and English poses word recognition difficulties for English-speaking learners of Chinese. This doctoral dissertation project examines how native Chinese listeners and proficient adult English-speaking learners of Chinese use tonal information in word recognition as the speech signal unfolds in time. Two visual-world eye-tracking experiments will be conducted to investigate three potential differences between native Chinese listeners and English learners of Chinese in their use of tonal information in word recognition: (i) their potentially different sensitivities to the early pitch height of the tone (high vs. low); (ii) their potentially different sensitivities to fine-grained variability in this early pitch height; and (iii) their potentially different abilities to use the complete pitch contour of the tone. It is hypothesized that the time course of use of tonal information will differ between Chinese and English listeners, with English listeners showing more sensitivity to fine-grained early pitch height information than Chinese listeners (suggesting less categorical perception of lexical tones) but ultimately having more difficulty in using pitch contour information in word recognition. The findings of this research will make an important contribution to the understanding of how tonal information modulates word recognition in native Chinese listeners and English-speaking learners of Chinese, and it will have pedagogical implications for the teaching of Chinese.