Repetition Priming Effects in Proficient Mandarin–Cantonese and Cantonese–Mandarin Bidialectals: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

The present study adopted a repetition priming paradigm to investigate the bidialectal (bilingual) representation of speakers with different native dialects by event-related potential (ERP) technique. Proficient Mandarin-Cantonese and Cantonese-Mandarin bidialectals participated in the study. They were required to judge whether a word was a biological word or not, when the words (target word) were represented under four types of repetition priming conditions: Mandarin (prime)-Mandarin (target), Mandarin (prime)-Cantonese (target), Cantonese (prime)-Cantonese (target) and Cantonese (prime)-Mandarin (target). Results of reaction time and accuracy primarily indicated larger repetition priming effects in Mandarin-Mandarin and Cantonese-Cantonese (within-language) conditions than that in Mandarin-Cantonese and Cantonese-Mandarin (between-language) conditions. But more importantly, P200 and N400 mean amplitudes revealed distinct repetition priming effects between two types of participants. Specifically, both P200 and N400 indicated that the repetition priming effect in Mandarin-Mandarin condition was larger than that in Cantonese-Cantonese condition for Mandarin-Cantonese participants, whereas it was opposite for Cantonese-Mandarin participants. In addition, P200 also suggested opposite patterns of repetition priming effects in between-language priming conditions for two groups of participants. The repetition priming effect in Mandarin-Cantonese condition was larger than that in Cantonese-Mandarin condition for Mandarin-Cantonese participants, while for Cantonese-Mandarin participants, it was opposite (Mandarin-Cantonese < Cantonese-Mandarin). The results implied a clear asymmetric representation of two dialects for proficient bidialectals. They were further discussed in light of native dialect and language use frequency.

The Mental Lexicon Features of the Hakka-Mandarin Dialect Bilingual

“…However, the mental lexicon of dialect bilingual speakers, a variation of bilingual, has been examined very little. Dialect bilingual speakers refer to those who speak more than one dialect [ 1 , 2 ]. Among the dialects they speak, one is frequently used for social interactions with family, namely the first dialect (D1).…”

“…Similar to the bilinguals who speak two distinct languages, the dialects spoken by dialect bilingual speakers may have distinct phonetic and syntactic systems [ 4 ]. However, bilinguals and dialect bilingual speakers differ in terms of mutual intelligibility and political and social conventions [ 1 ]. In terms of the intelligibility criterion, the languages spoken by bilinguals are not mutually intelligible, while the dialects spoken by dialect bilingual speakers are mutually intelligible [ 1 ].…”

“…However, bilinguals and dialect bilingual speakers differ in terms of mutual intelligibility and political and social conventions [ 1 ]. In terms of the intelligibility criterion, the languages spoken by bilinguals are not mutually intelligible, while the dialects spoken by dialect bilingual speakers are mutually intelligible [ 1 ]. Nevertheless, there are dialects that are not mutually intelligible, such as Hakka and Mandarin in Chinese dialects, and the criterion may not count.…”

“…Moreover, the dialects may share more linguistic similarities compared with the separate languages spoken by bilinguals. For example, Hakka and Mandarin share many cognates that originated from ancient Chinese [ 1 ].…”

“…Similar to Mandarin, Hakka also originated from ancient Chinese and used the Han writing system as orthography [ 35 ]. This confers more linguistic similarities between Hakka and Mandarin, like a large proportion of cognates [ 1 , 33 ], in contrast to more apparent differences between Cantonese and Mandarin that were the focus of previous work. Given the special characteristics of such a type of speaker, the lexicon structure of Hakka-Mandarin dialect bilingual speakers “deserves due attention from Chinese academia” [ 36 ].…”