Lexical tone processing by monolingual and bilingual speakers of tone and non-tone languages
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Abstract
This study tests early Chinese-English bilinguals’ perception of Thai lexical tone. Lexical tone is a feature that is used contrastively in Chinese but not in English. Chinese-learning infants exhibit native-like treatment of Thai tonal contours, while English learners exhibit non-native perceptual behaviour (Mattock & Burnham, 2006). However, early Chinese-English bilingual adults in the present study do not perform differently on the task than do monolingual English speakers with no tone language experience. Late Chinese-English bilinguals perform more accurately than both of the other groups. Early bilinguals do exhibit evidence of Chinese language experience, as their within-task processing strategies more closely resemble those of late bilingual speakers than those of English monolinguals. Developmental and biographical explanations for the behaviour of the early bilinguals are explored through the use of a language proficiency questionnaire, and the role of bilingual dominance is analyzed in relation to performance on this task.