Abstract
Previous research has indicated that, in viewing a visual word, the activated phonological representation in turn activates its homophone, causing semantic interference. Using this mechanism of phonological mediation, this study investigated native-language phonological interference in visual recognition of Chinese two-character compounds by early Hakka–Mandarin bilinguals. A visual semantic-relatedness decision task in Chinese was given to native Mandarin speakers and early Hakka–Mandarin bilinguals. Both participant groups made more false positive errors and responded more slowly to the pair of two-character compounds containing a homophone; but only Hakka–Mandarin bilinguals made more false positive errors and responded more slowly to the pair containing a near-homophone. We concluded that phonology is needed in both native and nonnative speakers’ meaning access of Chinese two-character compounds and that native-language phonological interference is universal in L2 visual word recognition, not language type dependent; phonological and orthographic information are “interactive-compensatory” in helping Hakka readers’ resolve the interference.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
References
Becker, C. A. (1976). Allocation of attention during visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 2, 556–566.
Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realistic perspective on cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 171–204). Baltimore: York Press.
Best, C. T., & Tyler, M. D. (2007). Non-native and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In O. Bohn & M. J. Munro (Eds.), Language experience in second language speech learning: In honor of James Emil Flege (pp. 13–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bosch, L., Costa, A., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2000). First and second language vowel perception in early bilinguals. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 12, 189–221.
Chen, H. C., d’Arcais, G. B. F., & Cheung, S. L. (1995). Orthographic and phonological activation in recognizing Chinese characters. Psychological Research/Psychologische Forschung, 58(2), 144–153.
Chen, H.-C., & Shu, H. (2001). Lexical activation during the recognition of Chinese characters: Evidence against early phonological activation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 511–518.
Constable, N. (2005). Guest people: Hakka identity in China and abroad. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (2004). Pseudo-homophony in non-native listening. Paper presented to the 75th meeting of the Acoustic Society of America. New York: Acoustic Society of America.
Flege, J. (1995). Second-language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233–277). Baltimore: York Press.
Flege, J. E., & MacKay, I. R. A. (2004). Perceiving vowels in a second language. SSLA, 26, 1–34.
Forrest, R. A. D. (1948). The Chinese language. London: Faber and Faber.
Goto, H. (1971). Auditory perception by normal Japanese adults of the sounds “l” and “r”. Neuropsychologia, 9, 317–323.
Gough, P. B. (1972). One second of reading. In J. A. Kavanagh & I. G. Mattingly (Eds.), Language by eye and by ear (pp. 331–358). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Guo, Y., & Burgund, E. D. (2010). Task effects in the mid-fusiform gyrus: A comparison of orthographic, phonological, and semantic processing of Chinese characters. Brain and Language, 115(2), 113–120.
Halderman, L. K., Ashby, J., & Perfetti, C. A. (2012). An early and integral role in identifying words. Visual word recognition volume 1: Models and methods, orthography and phonology, 1, 207.
Hashimoto, M. J. (2010). The Hakka dialect: A linguistic study of its phonology, syntax and lexicon (Princeton/Cambridge Studies in Chinese Linguistics). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Havik, E., Roberts, L., van Hout, R., Schreuder, R., & Haverkort, M. (2009). Processing subject-object ambiguities in the L2: A self-paced reading study with German L2 learners of Dutch. Language Learning, 59(1), 73–112.
Humphreys, G. W., Evett, L. J., & Taylor, D. E. (1982). Automatic phonological priming in visual word recognition. Memory & Cognition, 10, 576–590.
Ingvalson, E. M., & Ettlinger, M. (2014). Bilingual speech perception and learning: A review of recent trends. International Journal of Bilingualism, 18(1), 35–47.
Kuhl, P., & Iverson, P. (1995). Linguistic experience and the “perceptual magnet effect”. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 121–153). Baltimore, MD: York Press.
Lam, A., Perfetti, C. A., & Bell, L. (1991). Automatic phonetic transfer in bidialectal reading. Applied Psycholinguistics, 12, 299–311.
Lesch, M. E., & Pollatsek, A. (1993). Automatic access of semantic information by phonological codes in visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 19, 285–294.
Luo, C. R., Johnson, R. A., & Gallo, D. A. (1998). Automatic activation of phonological information in reading: Evidence from the semantic relatedness decision task. Memory and Cognition, 26, 833–843.
McBride-Chang, C., & Chen, H. C. (2003). Reading development in Chinese children. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishing.
Mei, L., Xue, G., Lu, Z.-L., Chen, C. S., Zhang, M. X., He, Q. H., et al. (2014). Learning to read words in a new language shapes the neural organization of the prior languages. Neuropsychologia, 65, 156–168.
Miyawaki, K., Strange, W., Verbrugge, R., Liberman, A. L., Jenkins, J. J., & Fujimura, O. (1975). An effect of linguistic experience: The discrimination of [r] and [l] by native speakers of Japanese and English. Perception and Psychophysics, 18, 331–340.
Nixon, J. S., Chen, Y., & Schiller, N. O. (2015). Multi-level processing of phonetic variants in speech production and visual word processing: Evidence from Mandarin lexical tones. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 491–505.
Ota, M., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Haywood, S. L. (2009). The KEY to the ROCK: Near-homophony in nonnative visual word recognition. Cognition, 111, 263–269.
Ota, M., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Haywood, S. L. (2010). Is a FAN always FUN? Phonological and orthographic effects in bilingual visual word recognition. Language and Speech, 53(3), 383–403.
Paap, K. R., Newsome, S. L., Mcdonald, L. E., & Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1982). An activation verification model for word and letter recognition: The word superiority effect. Psychological Review, 89, 573–594.
Pallier, C., Colomé, A., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). The influence of native-language phonology on lexical access: Exemplar-based versus abstract lexical entries. Psychological Science, 12, 445–449.
Pallier, C., Bosch, L., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (1997). A limit on behavioral plasticity in speech perception. Cognition, 64, 9–17.
Perfetti, C. A., & Harris, L. N. (2013). Universal reading processes are modulated by language and writing system. Language Learning and Development, 9(4), 296–316.
Perfetti, C. A., & Tan, L. H. (1998). The time course of graphic, phonological, and semantic activation in Chinese character identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 24, 101–118.
Perfetti, C. A., & Zhang, S. (1995). Very early phonological activation in Chinese reading. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 24–33.
Perfetti, C. A., Cao, F., & Booth, J. (2013). Specialization and universals in the development of reading skill: How Chinese research informs a universal science of reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17, 5–21.
Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., & Tan, L. H. (2005). The lexical constituency model: Some implications of research on Chinese for general theories of reading. Psychological Review, 12(11), 43–59.
Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., Fiez, J., Nelson, J., Bolger, D. J., & Tan, L. H. (2007). Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brain’s reading network. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(2), 131–146.
Perfetti, C. A., & Liu, Y. (2006). Reading Chinese characters: Orthography, phonology, meaning, and the lexical constituency model. In P. Li, L. H. Tan, E. Bates, & O. J. L. Tzeng (Eds.), The handbook of East Asian psycholinguistics, Chinese (Vol. 1, pp. 225–236). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Rubenstein, H., Lewis, S. S., & Rubenstein, M. A. (1971). Evidence for phonemic recoding in visual word recognition. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior, 10, 645–658.
Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Soto-Faraco, S. (1999). On-line processing of native and non-native phonemic contrasts in early bilinguals. Cognition, 72, 111–123.
Shi, X. (2010). Vowel patterns of Chinese dialects. Beijing: Chinese Social Science Press.
Stanovich, K. E. (1980). Toward an interactive compensatory model of individual differences in the development of reading fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32–71.
Tan, L. H., & Perfetti, C. A. (1997). Visual Chinese character recognition: Does phonological information mediate access to meaning? Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 41–57.
Tan, L. H., & Perfetti, C. A. (1998). Phonological codes as early sources of constraint in Chinese word identification: A review of current discoveries and theoretical accounts. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 10, 165–200.
Van Orden, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading. Memory & Cognition, 15, 181–198.
Van Orden, G. C., Johnston, J. C., & Hale, B. L. (1988). Word identification in reading proceeds from spelling to sound to meaning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 14, 371–386.
Van Orden, G. C., Pennington, B., & Stone, G. (1990). Word identification in reading and the promise of subsymbolic psycholinguistics. Psychological Review, 97, 488–522.
Wang, M., Koda, K., & Perfetti, C. A. (2003). Alphabetic and non-alphabetic L1 effects in English word identification: A comparison of Korean and Chinese English L2 learners. Cognition, 87, 129–149.
Wang, M., Lin, C. Y., & Yang, C. (2014). Contributions of phonology, orthography, and morphology in Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition: A one-Year longitudinal study. In X. Chen, Q. Wang, & Y. C. Luo (Eds.), Reading development and difficulties in monolingual and bilingual Chinese children (pp. 191–211). Berlin, Netherlands: Springer.
Wong, A. W. K., & Chen, H. C. (2012). Is syntactic-category processing obligatory in visual word recognition? Evidence from Chinese. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 1334–1360.
Wong, A. W.-K., Wu, Y., & Chen, H.-C. (2014). Limited role of phonology in reading Chinese two-character compounds: Evidence from an ERP study. Neuroscience, 256, 342–351.
Yamada, J. (2004). An L1-script-transfer-effect fallacy: A rejoinder to Wang et al. (2003). Cognition, 93, 127–132.
Yamada, R. A., & Tohkura, Y. I. (1990). Perception and production of syllable-initial English /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of Japanese. Proceedings of the 1990 international conference on spoken language processing, 757–760.
Yeung, S. S., & Ganotice, F. A. (2014). The role of phonological awareness in biliteracy acquisition among Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners who learn English-as-a-second language (ESL). The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 23, 333–343.
Zhang, W. (2012). A standard dictionary of Hakka dialect. Guangzhou: Sun Yat-Sen University Press.
Zhang, X., Samuel, A. G., & Liu, S. (2012). The perception and representation of segmental and prosodic Mandarin contrasts in native speakers of Cantonese. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 438–457.
Zhou, X., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (1996). Direct visual access is the only way to access the chinese mental lexicon. In G. Cottrell (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 714–719). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Zhou, X., Marslen-Wilson, W., Taft, M., & Shu, H. (1999). Morphology, orthography, and phonology in reading Chinese compound words. Language and Cognitive Processes, 14, 525–565.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China (Shiyu Wu) (Grant No. 14BYY007).
Appendix: List of Homophones, Minimal Pairs, and Visual Controls
Appendix: List of Homophones, Minimal Pairs, and Visual Controls
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wu, S., Ma, Z. Native-Language Phonological Interference in Early Hakka–Mandarin Bilinguals’ Visual Recognition of Chinese Two-Character Compounds: Evidence from the Semantic-Relatedness Decision Task. J Psycholinguist Res 46, 57–75 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9420-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-016-9420-8