Zou Ting, Luo Xinbing
School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2025 Jan 29;15:1414732. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1414732. eCollection 2024.
This study investigates whether unfamiliar tone sandhi patterns in Tianjin Mandarin can be implicitly learned through an artificial language learning experiment, and if the acquired knowledge is rule-based and generalizable.
Participants were trained to learn monosyllabic words and disyllabic phrases with their attention focused on a word-order rule, while unknowingly being exposed to unfamiliar tone sandhi patterns. A judgement test with trial-to-trial confidence ratings was conducted to assess the learning outcomes and participants' awareness.
Results revealed significantly above-chance performance on tone sandhi patterns for learned phrases. This learning effect was generalized to unseen phrases made up of familiar words, but not to phrases with new words, indicating a degree of abstraction across instances, though the learning is not fully rule-based. The confidence rating results suggest that participants were unaware of the structural sandhi knowledge, but the reaction time data of the judgement test indicate that the sandhi knowledge was learned with awareness at the level of noticing.
The results have been discussed in light of theories of implicit learning and the findings of previous research on phonological learning.
本研究通过一项人工语言学习实验，探究天津话中不熟悉的连读变调模式是否能被隐性习得，以及所习得的知识是否基于规则且具有可推广性。
参与者在专注于词序规则的同时，接受单音节词和双音节短语的训练，在此过程中不知不觉地接触到不熟悉的连读变调模式。通过一项带有逐次试验信心评级的判断测试来评估学习成果和参与者的意识。
结果显示，所学短语的连读变调模式的表现显著高于随机水平。这种学习效果推广到了由熟悉单词组成的未见过的短语，但未推广到包含新单词的短语，这表明尽管学习并非完全基于规则，但在一定程度上能够跨实例进行抽象。信心评级结果表明参与者并未意识到连读变调的结构知识，但判断测试的反应时间数据表明，连读变调知识是在注意层面上有意识地习得的。
根据隐性学习理论和先前语音学习研究的结果对这些结果进行了讨论。
