Studies On Cross Linguistic Transfer Patterning And Prosodic Typology

In psycholinguistic research there has traditionally been a strong emphasis on understanding how particular language types of are processed and learned . In particular, Romance and Germanic languages (e.g. English, French, German) have, until recently, received more attention than other types, such as Chinese languages. This has led to selective emphasis on the phonological building blocks of European languages, consonants and vowels, to the exclusion of lexical tones which, like consonants and vowels, determine lexical meaning, but unlike consonants and vowels are based on pitch variations. Lexical tone is pervasive; it is used in at least half of the world’ languages (Maddieson, 2013), e.g., most Asian and some African, Central American, and European languages. This Research Topic brings together a collection of recent empirical research on the processing and representation of lexical tones across the lifespan with an emphasis on advancing knowledge on how tone systems are acquired. The articles focus on various aspects of tone: early perception of tones, influences of tone on word learning, the acquisition of new tone systems, and production of tones. One set of articles report on tone perception at the earliest stage of development, in infants learning either tone or non-tone languages. Tsao and Chen et al. demonstrate that infants’ sensitivity to Mandarin lexical tones, as well as pitch, improves over the first year of life in native and non-native learners in contrast to traditional accounts of perceptual narrowing for consonants and vowels. Götz et al. report a different pattern of perception for Cantonese tones and further demonstrate influences of methodological approaches on infants’ tone sensitivity. Fan et al. demonstrate that sensitivity to less well-studied properties of tone languages, such as neutral tone, may develop after the first year of life. Cheng and Lee ask a similar question in an electrophysiological study and report effects of stimulus salience on infants’ neural response to native tones. In a complementary set of studies focused on tone sensitivity in word learning, Burnham et al. demonstrate that infants bind tones to newly-learned words if they are learning a tone language, either monolingually or bilingually; although it was also found that object-word binding was influenced by the properties of individual tones. Liu and Kager chart a developmental trajectory over the second year of life in which infants narrow in their interpretation of non-native tones. Choi et al. investigate how learning a tone language can influence uptake of other suprasegmental properties of language, such as stress, and demonstrate that native tone sensitivity in children can facilitate stress sensitivity when learning a stress-based language. Finally, two studies focus on sensitivity to pitch in a sub-class tone languages: pitch accent languages. In a study on Japanese children’s abilities to recognise words they know, Ota et al. demonstrate a limited sensitivity to native pitch contrasts in toddlers. In contrast, Ramachers et al. demonstrate comparatively strong sensitivity to pitch in native and non-native speakers of a different pitch accent system (Limburghian) when learning new words. Several studies focus on learning new tone systems. In a training study with school-aged children, Kasisopa et al. demonstrate that tone language experience increases children’s abilities to learn new tone contrasts. Poltrock et al. demonstrate similar advantages of tone experience in learning new tone systems in adults. And in an elecrophysiological study, Liu et al. demonstrate order effects in adults’ neural responses to new tones, discussing implications for learning tone languages as an adult. Finally, Hannah et al. demonstrate that extralinguistic cues, such as facial expression, can support adults’ learning of new tone systems. In three studies investigating tone production, Rattansone et al. report the results of a study demonstrating kindergartners’ asynchronous mastery of tones – delayed acquisition of tone sandhi forms relative to base forms. In a study interrogating a corpus of adult tone production, Han et al. demonstrate that mothers produce tones in a distinct manner when speaking to infants; tone differences are emphasised more when speaking to infants than to adults. Combining perception and production of tones, Wong et al. report asynchronous development of tone perception and tone production in children. The Research Topic also includes a series of Opinion pieces and Commentaries addressing the broader relevance of tone and pitch to the study of language acquisition. Curtin and Werker discuss ways in which tone can be integrated into their model of infant language development (PRIMIR). Best discusses the phonological status of lexical tones and considers how recent empirical research on tone perception bears on this question. Kager focuses on how language learners distinguish lexical tones from other sources of pitch variation (e.g., affective and pragmatic) that also inform language comprehension. Finally, Antoniou and Chin unite evidence of tone sensitivity from children and adults and discuss how these areas of research can be mutually informative. Psycholinguistic studies of lexical tone acquisition have burgeoned over the past 13 years. This collection of empirical studies and opinion pieces provides a state-of-the-art panoply of the psycholinguistic study of lexical tones, and demonstrate its coming of age. The articles in this Research Topic will help address the hitherto Eurocentric non-tone language research emphasis, and will contribute to an expanding narrative of speech perception, speech production, and language acquisition that includes all of the world’s languages. Importantly, these studies underline the scientific promise of drawing from tone languages in psycholinguistic research; the research questions raised by lexical tone are unique and distinct from those typically applied to more widely studied languages and populations. The comprehensive study of language acquisition can only benefit from this expanded focus.

The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language brings together contributions on such issues as Cantonese textbooks, linguistic description, literacy and tone acquisition, supplemented by case studies from the Netherlands and Japan. The learning and teaching of Cantonese as a second language is a subject of considerable interest in the international academic community, and the first international symposium on teaching Cantonese as a second language, held at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in October 2019, brought together leading researchers in this field. This conference provided the inspiration for the current volume, The Learning and Teaching of Cantonese as a Second Language. In the Hong Kong context, historically, the term ‘Cantonese’ refers to the language varieties of immigrants who came to the territory from various areas in Guangdong province, including Macau, Panyu, Taishan, Xinhui and Zhongshan. From the late nineteenth century onwards, their speech coalesced into the contemporary variety of Cantonese used in Hong Kong today. The term ‘Cantonese’ is also used to refer to the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese, which includes varieties of Cantonese spoken in southern China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore and among overseas Chinese in Australia, Europe and North America. In all, it is estimated that there are about 70 million Cantonese speakers in the world. This volume is of direct relevance to educators, language teachers, linguists and all those concerned with the learning of Cantonese as a second language.

This volume, dedicated to language transfer, starts out with state-of-the-art psycholinguistic approaches to language transfer involving studies on psycho-typological transfer, lexical interference and foreign accent. The next chapter on Transfer in Language Learning, Contact, and Change presents new empirical data from several languages (English, German, Russian, French, Italian) on various transfer phenomena ranging from second language acquisition and contact-induced change in word order to cross-linguistic influences in word formation and the lexicon. Transfer in Applied Linguistics scrutinizes, on the one hand, the external sources of language transfer by investigating bilingual resources and the school context, but also by pointing out the differences in academic language in multilingual adolescents. On the other hand, internal sources of language transfer in multilingual classrooms are illuminated. A final chapter directs its focus on methodological issues that arise when more than one language is studied systematically and it offers a solution on causal effects for the investigation of heritage language proficiencies. The chapter also includes studies that exploit more innovative methodologies on L1 identification and clitic acquisition.

This collection of original papers by eminent phoneticians, linguists and sociologists offers the most recent findings on phonetic design in interactional discourse available in an edited collection. The chapters examine the organization of phonetic detail in relation to social actions in talk-in-interaction based on data drawn from diverse languages: Japanese, English, Finnish, and German, as well as from diverse speakers: children, fluent adults and adults with language loss. Because similar methodology is deployed for the investigation of similar conversational tasks in different languages, the collection paves the way towards a cross-linguistic phonology for conversation. The studies reported in the volume make it clear that language-specific constraints are at work in determining exactly which phonetic and prosodic resources are deployed for a given purpose and how they articulate with grammar in different cultures and speech communities.