Spoken Word Recognition across Language Boundary: ERP Evidence of Prosodic Transfer Driven by Pitch

Authors

Juan Zhang
Yaxuan Meng
Chenggang Wu
Zhen Yuan

Publication Date

1-25-2023

Journal

Brain Sciences

Abstract

Extensive research has explored the perception of English lexical stress by Chinese EFL learners and tried to unveil the underlying mechanism of the prosodic transfer from a native tonal language to a non-native stress language. However, the role of the pitch as the shared cue by lexical stress and lexical tone during the transfer remains controversial when the segmental cue (i.e., reduced vowel) is absent. By employing event-related potential (ERP) measurements, the current study aimed to further investigate the role of the pitch during the prosodic transfer from L1 lexical tone to L2 lexical stress and the underlying neural responses. Two groups of adult Chinese EFL learners were compared, as both Mandarin and Cantonese are tonal languages with different levels of complexity. The results showed that Cantonese speakers relied more than Mandarin speakers on pitch cues, not only in their processing of English lexical stress but also in word recognition. Our findings are consistent with the arguments of

Keywords

Chinese EFL learner, pitch, prosodic transfer, spoken word recognition

Comments

Associated Data

PMID: 36831746