Quam Carolyn, Creel Sarah C
Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego.
Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2017 Feb 1;60(2):293-305. doi: 10.1044/2016_JSLHR-S-15-0248.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether the degree of dominance of Mandarin-English bilinguals' languages affects phonetic processing of tone content in their native language, Mandarin.
We tested 72 Mandarin-English bilingual college students with a range of language-dominance profiles in the 2 languages and ages of acquisition of English. Participants viewed 2 photographs at a time while hearing a familiar Mandarin word referring to 1 photograph. The names of the 2 photographs diverged in tone, vowels, or both. Word recognition was evaluated using clicking accuracy, reaction times, and an online recognition measure (gaze) and was compared in the 3 conditions.
Relative proficiency in English was correlated with reduced word recognition success in tone-disambiguated trials, but not in vowel-disambiguated trials, across all 3 dependent measures. This selective attrition for tone content emerged even though all bilinguals had learned Mandarin from birth. Lengthy experience with English thus weakened tone use.
This finding has implications for the question of the extent to which bilinguals' 2 phonetic systems interact. It suggests that bilinguals may not process pitch information language-specifically and that processing strategies from the dominant language may affect phonetic processing in the nondominant language-even when the latter was learned natively.
本研究旨在确定汉英双语者语言的主导程度是否会影响其母语（汉语）中声调内容的语音处理。
我们测试了72名汉英双语大学生，他们在两种语言中的语言主导程度和英语习得年龄各不相同。参与者每次观看两张照片，同时听到一个指称其中一张照片的熟悉汉语单词。两张照片的名称在声调、元音或两者上有所不同。使用点击准确率、反应时间和一种在线识别测量方法（注视）来评估单词识别，并在三种条件下进行比较。
在所有三项相关测量中，英语的相对熟练程度与声调歧义消除试验中单词识别成功率的降低相关，但在元音歧义消除试验中则不然。尽管所有双语者从出生就开始学习汉语，但对声调内容的这种选择性损耗仍然出现。因此，长期接触英语会削弱声调的使用。
这一发现对双语者的两种语音系统在多大程度上相互作用的问题具有启示意义。它表明双语者可能不会按语言特异性方式处理音高信息，并且主导语言的处理策略可能会影响非主导语言中的语音处理——即使后者是母语习得的。
