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.
