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Covert Activation of Lexical tones in Mandarin-English bilinguals: evidence from MEG
Poster Session B, Friday, October 25, 10:00 - 11:30 am, Great Hall 3 and 4
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Xindong Zhang1, Judy D. Zhu2, Paul F. Sowman3,4, Xin Wang1; 1Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, 2School of Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University, 3School of Clinical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, 4Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Macquarie University
Lexical tone is a crucial cue constraining spoken word recognition in tonal languages. Wang et al. (2017) showed that Mandarin-English bilingual listeners co-activated both languages in a visual world paradigm, and that lexical tones were critical in cross-language activation and competition. Using the same set of stimuli in Wang et al (2017), we investigated the neural basis of cross-language competition and the role of lexical tones with Magnetoencephalography (MEG). Continuous recording with whole-head MEG was carried out during a picture-word matching task, where a target picture was displayed for 1000ms followed by an auditory word. Participants were required to indicate whether the word they heard matched (YES) or mismatched (NO) the picture via button-press. The picture remained on the screen until participants made a response. All the auditory words were monosyllabic English words, which consist of 35 easily imageable nouns as targets, each appearing on an equal number of matched and mismatched trials. The mismatch trials were allocated into four experimental conditions based on the phonological relationship between the Mandarin translation of an English auditory word and the name of a picture in Mandarin. Take the auditory word ‘rain’ (/yu3/ in Mandarin) as an example. In the Segmental + Tone condition, the Mandarin translation of the auditory word (e.g., rain) shared both phoneme and tone of the Mandarin name of the picture ‘feather’ ( /yu3/ in Mandarin); in the Segmental condition, the Mandarin translation of the auditory word shared all phonemes but not tone with the Mandarin name of the picture ‘fish’(Mandarin /yu2/); in the Rime condition, the Mandarin translation of the auditory word shared tone and vowels, but not the onset with the Mandarin name of the picture ‘wheat’ (Mandarin /gu3/); in the baseline, there is no phonological relationship between the word and picture (‘bear’; Mandarin ‘xiong2’). We hypothesize that the amplitudes of bilinguals’ brain waveforms can be driven by varying types of phonological overlap between the target and picture (i.e., segment + tone overlap vs. only segments overlap vs. rime overlap vs. baseline) in brain areas related to lexical tone processing or language inhibition and conflict resolution (i.e., left inferior frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate cortex). Twenty participants’ MEG data were collected, and preliminary analysis was conducted. Here, cross-language competition is driven by phonological overlap through covert lexical access to Mandarin, and lexical tone plays a crucial role in lexical activation. Thus, we predicted that the Segmental + Tone mismatch condition could elicit the largest brain activity compared with the other three mismatch conditions. Segmental condition and Rime condition may elicit similar brain amplitudes. So far, we have observed a significant difference between match trials and mismatch trials. We are currently conducting ROI-based analysis to compare across the four mismatch conditions. Wang, X., Wang, J., & Malins, J. G. (2017). Do you hear ‘feather’ when listening to ‘rain’? Lexical tone activation during unconscious translation: Evidence from Mandarin-English bilinguals. Cognition, 169, 15–24.
Topic Areas: Multilingualism, Phonology