In tonal languages such as Mandarin, both lexical tone and sentence intonation are primarily signaled by F0. Their F0 encodings are sometimes in conflict and sometimes in congruency. The present... Show moreIn tonal languages such as Mandarin, both lexical tone and sentence intonation are primarily signaled by F0. Their F0 encodings are sometimes in conflict and sometimes in congruency. The present study investigated how tone and intonation, with F0 encodings in conflict or in congruency, are processed and how semantic context may affect their processing. To this end, tone and intonation identification experiments were conducted in both semantically neutral and constraining contexts. Results showed that the overall performance of tone identification was better than that of intonation. Specifically, tone identification was seldom affected by intonation information irrespective of semantic contexts. However, intonation identification, particularly question intonation, was susceptible to the final lexical tone identity and affected by the semantic context. In the semantically neutral context, questions ending with a rising tone and a falling tone were equally difficult to identify. In the semantically constraining context, questions ending with a falling tone were much better identified than those ending with a rising tone. This perceptual asymmetry suggests that top-down information provided by the semantically constraining context can play a facilitating role for listeners to disentangle intonational information from tonal information, but mainly in sentences with the lexical falling tone in the final position. Show less
Phonological similarity affects bilingual lexical access of etymologically-related translation equivalents (ETEs). Jinan Mandarin (JM) and Standard Chinese (SC) are closely related and share many... Show morePhonological similarity affects bilingual lexical access of etymologically-related translation equivalents (ETEs). Jinan Mandarin (JM) and Standard Chinese (SC) are closely related and share many ETEs, which are usually orthographically and segmentally identical but vary in tonal similarity. Using an auditory lexical decision experiment and Generalised Additive Modelling, the present study investigates how cross-linguistic tonal similarity interacts with language of operation and how the switching of language across blocks influences SC-JM bilinguals’ auditory lexical processing of ETEs. Bilinguals showed a language dominance effect, indicating that ETEs are specified with separated word-form representations. Compared with SC tonal monolinguals, bilinguals showed a discontinuous bilingual auditory lexical advantage, instead of a classical bilingual lexical disadvantage. The dynamic role of cross-linguistic tonal similarity in auditory word processing is discussed in light of the bilinguals’ attentional shift with the change of language mode at the pre-lexical and lexical stages. Show less
