Why Are Lexical Tones Difficult to Learn?

Chan, Ricky K. W.; Leung, Janny H.C.

doi:10.1017/s0272263119000482

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Since our first study (Pelzl et al, 2019), the particular difficulty of disyllabic, as opposed to monosyllabic tone words, has remained an open question. Studies with naïve, novice, and intermediate proficiency L2 participants have reported this pattern in tone category identification tasks (Broselow et al, 1987;Hao, 2018;Sun, 1998;see also;Chan and Leung, 2020). In a tone word training study with naive learners, Chang and Bowles (2015) found disyllabic words to be much more challenging than monosyllabic words.…”

Section: Three General Accounts Of Tone Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…This is the real-time process that links the perceived phonetic signal to phonolexical representations encoded in long-term memory. It roughly corresponds to the phonological step of the phonetic-phonological-lexical continuum (Wong and Perrachione, 2007;Chan and Leung, 2020), but we wish to stress the lexical aspect of this process, along with the phonological. For L2 learners, years of experience attending only to the important phonetic features of their L1 might interfere in real-time word recognition.…”

Section: Three General Explanations For L2 Tone Word Processing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

et al. 2021

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People who grow up speaking a language without lexical tones typically find it difficult to master tonal languages after childhood. Accumulating research suggests that much of the challenge for these second language (L2) speakers has to do not with identification of the tones themselves, but with the bindings between tones and lexical units. The question that remains open is how much of these lexical binding problems are problems of encoding (incomplete knowledge of the tone-to-word relations) vs. retrieval (failure to access those relations in online processing). While recent work using lexical decision tasks suggests that both may play a role, one issue is that failure on a lexical decision task may reflect a lack of learner confidence about what is not a word, rather than non-native representation or processing of known words. Here we provide complementary evidence using a picture-phonology matching paradigm in Mandarin in which participants decide whether or not a spoken target matches a specific image, with concurrent event-related potential (ERP) recording to provide potential insight into differences in L1 and L2 tone processing strategies. As in the lexical decision case, we find that advanced L2 learners show a clear disadvantage in accurately identifying tone mismatched targets relative to vowel mismatched targets. We explore the contribution of incomplete/uncertain lexical knowledge to this performance disadvantage by examining individual data from an explicit tone knowledge post-test. Results suggest that explicit tone word knowledge and confidence explains some but not all of the errors in picture-phonology matching. Analysis of ERPs from correct trials shows some differences in the strength of L1 and L2 responses, but does not provide clear evidence toward differences in processing that could explain the L2 disadvantage for tones. In sum, these results converge with previous evidence from lexical decision tasks in showing that advanced L2 listeners continue to have difficulties with lexical tone recognition, and in suggesting that these difficulties reflect problems both in encoding lexical tone knowledge and in retrieving that knowledge in real time.

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Section: Three General Accounts Of Tone Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Three General Explanations For L2 Tone Word Processing Difficultiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

et al. 2021

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“…For instance, Poltrock et al (2018) showed that Mandarin participants outperformed French listeners in recalling Cantonese pseudowords that contrasted in tone. Chan and Leung (2020) investigated the effects of L1 tonal status on the incidental 'phonological learning', which was defined as an intermediate step between tone perception and tone word learning (p. 4). They show that Cantonese participants outperformed English participants in the phonological learning of Thai tones, and suggest that Cantonese L1 tonal status facilitated the formation of syllable-level tone categories required for utilizing tones at the word level.…”

Section: L1-specific Factors In Tone Word Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

The combined effects of L1-specific and extralinguistic factors on individual performance in a tone categorization and word identification task by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 speakers

Laméris

Post

2022

Second Language Research

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Adult second language learners often show considerable individual variability in the ease with which lexical tones are learned. It is known that factors pertaining to a learner’s first language (L1; such as L1 tonal status or L1 tone type) as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory) modulate tone learning facility. However, how such L1-specific and extralinguistic factors affect performance together in dynamic ways is less well understood. Therefore, to unpack the potential interactions between these factors for individual learners, we assessed the combined effects of L1 tonal status, L1 tone type, and musical experience and working memory on second language (L2) tone perception and word learning in a tonal pseudolanguage by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 adult learners, by using a pre-lexical tone categorization task and a lexical word identification task. We found that L2 tone perception and word learning were primarily facilitated by extralinguistic factors, but that the degree to which learners rely on these factors is modulated by their L1 tonal status, as for instance musical experience facilitated perception and word learning for English, but not for Mandarin participants. We also found clear effects of L1 tone type, as Mandarin participants tended to struggle with categorizing and lexically processing level tone contrasts, which do not occur in Mandarin.

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“…Though not focused on processing per se, recent work by Chan and Leung (2020) is also amenable to processing accounts in that it is deals with statistical learning mechanisms. They examined Cantonese and English L1 participants' abilities to pick up on co-occurrence patterns of syllable-initial segmental cues and specific tones (i.e., syllables beginning with aspirated stop consonants always had rising tones; syllables beginning with an approximant always had falling tones).…”

Section: Processing Biases Could Drive L2 Tone Word Errorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Even in the Best-Case Scenario L2 Learners Have Persistent Difficulty Perceiving and Utilizing Tones in Mandarin

Pelzl

Lau

Guo

et al. 2020

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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Lexical tones are widely believed to be a formidable learning challenge for adult speakers of nontonal languages. While difficulties—as well as rapid improvements—are well documented for beginning second language (L2) learners, research with more advanced learners is needed to understand how tone perception difficulties impact word recognition once learners have a substantial vocabulary. The present study narrows in on difficulties suggested in previous work, which found a dissociation in advanced L2 learners between highly accurate tone identification and largely inaccurate lexical decision for tone words. We investigate a “best-case scenario” for advanced L2 tone word processing by testing performance in nearly ideal listening conditions—with words spoken clearly and in isolation. Under such conditions, do learners still have difficulty in lexical decision for tone words? If so, is it driven by the quality of lexical representations or by L2 processing routines? Advanced L2 and native Chinese listeners made lexical decisions while an electroencephalogram was recorded. Nonwords had a first syllable with either a vowel or tone that differed from that of a common disyllabic word. As a group, L2 learners performed less accurately when tones were manipulated than when vowels were manipulated. Subsequent analyses showed that this was the case even in the subset of items for which learners showed correct and confident tone identification in an offline written vocabulary test. Event-related potential results indicated N400 effects for both nonword conditions in L1, but only vowel N400 effects in L2, with tone responses intermediate between those of real words and vowel nonwords. These results are evidence of the persistent difficulty most L2 learners have in using tones for online word recognition, and indicate it is driven by a confluence of factors related to both L2 lexical representations and processing routines. We suggest that this tone nonword difficulty has real-world implications for learners: It may result in many toneless word representations in their mental lexicons, and is likely to affect the efficiency with which they can learn new tone words.

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Why Are Lexical Tones Difficult to Learn?

Cited by 18 publications

References 72 publications

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

The combined effects of L1-specific and extralinguistic factors on individual performance in a tone categorization and word identification task by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 speakers

Even in the Best-Case Scenario L2 Learners Have Persistent Difficulty Perceiving and Utilizing Tones in Mandarin

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