Long-term experience with a tonal language shapes the perception of intonation in English words: How Chinese–English bilinguals perceive “Rose?” vs. “Rose”
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[1] University of Pittsburgh
University of Pittsburgh
City of Pittsburgh, Estados Unidos
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- Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 20, Nº 2, 2017 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Cross-linguistic Priming in Bilinguals: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Language Processing, Acquisition and Change), págs. 367-383
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
Long-term experience with a tonal language shapes pitch perception in specific ways, and consequently Chinese speakers may not process pitch in English words – e.g., “Rose?” spoken as a question versus “Rose” spoken as a statement – in the same way as native speakers of non-tonal languages do. If so, what are those pitch processing differences and how do they affect Chinese recognition of English words? We investigated these questions by administering a primed lexical-decision task in English to proficient Chinese–English bilinguals and two control groups, namely, Spanish–English and native English speakers. Prime-target pairs differed in one sound and/or in pitch. Results showed specific cross-language differences in pitch processing between the Chinese speakers and the control groups, confirming that experience with a tonal language shaped the perception of English words' intonation. Moreover, such experience helps to incorporate pitch into models of word-recognition for bilinguals of tonal and non-tonal languages.
