Tuning out tone errors? Native listeners do not down-weight tones when hearing unsystematic tone errors in foreign-accented Mandarin

Listeners can adapt to errors in foreign-accented speech, but not all errors are alike. We investigated whether exposure to unsystematic tone errors in second language Mandarin impacts responses to accurately produced words. Native Mandarin speakers completed a cross-modal priming task with words pr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inBilingualism (Cambridge, England) Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 215 - 222
Main Authors Pelzl, Eric, Carlson, Matthew T., Guo, Taomei, Jackson, Carrie N., van Hell, Janet G.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.01.2021
Subjects
Accentuation
Adaptation
Chinese as a second language
Cues
Diachronic Linguistics
Hearing
Illustrations
Mandarin
Native Language
Native Speakers
Non-native accent
Phonemes
Phonetics
Phonology
Research Notes
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Speech
Tone
Vowels
Word Recognition
adaptation
Mandarin
foreign-accented speech
cross-modal priming
lexical tones
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Listeners can adapt to errors in foreign-accented speech, but not all errors are alike. We investigated whether exposure to unsystematic tone errors in second language Mandarin impacts responses to accurately produced words. Native Mandarin speakers completed a cross-modal priming task with words produced by foreign-accented talkers who either produced consistently correct tones, or frequent tone errors. Facilitation from primes bearing correct tones was unaffected by the presence of tone errors elsewhere in the talker's speech. However, primes bearing tone errors inhibited recognition of real words and elicited stronger accentedness ratings. We consider theoretical implications for tone in foreign-accent adaptation.
ISSN:1366-7289
1469-1841
DOI:10.1017/S1366728920000280