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Regular exposure facilitates dual-mapping of Cantonese pronunciation variants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2024

Rachel Soo Open the ORCID record for Rachel Soo [Opens in a new window]  and
Molly Babel
Rachel Soo*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Molly Babel*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
*
rachel.soo@ubc.ca
molly.babel@ubc.ca
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Abstract

The multilingual landscape of Canada creates opportunities for many heterogeneous bilingual communities to experience systematic phonetic variation within and across languages and dialects, and exposes listeners to different pronunciation variants. This paper examines phonetic variation through the lens of an ongoing sound change in Cantonese involving word-initial [n] and [l] across two primed lexical decision tasks (Experiment 1: Immediate repetition priming task, Experiment 2: Long-distance repetition priming task). Our main question is: How are sound change pronunciation variants recognized and represented in a Cantonese-English bilingual lexicon? The results of both experiments suggest that [n]- and [l]-initial variants facilitate processing in both short and long-term spoken word recognition. Thus, regular exposure to Cantonese endows bilingual listeners with the perceptual flexibility to dually and gradiently map pronunciation variants to a single lexical representation.

Résumé

Résumé

Le paysage multilingue du Canada permet à de nombreuses communautés bilingues hétérogènes de faire l'expérience d'une variation phonétique systématique au sein de et entre les langues et les dialectes, et expose les auditeurs à différentes variantes de prononciation. Cet article examine la variation phonétique sous l'angle d'un changement de son en cours en cantonais impliquant les initiales du mot [n] et [l] dans deux tâches de décision lexicale avec amorçage (expérience 1 : tâche d'amorçage par répétition immédiate, expérience 2 : tâche d'amorçage par répétition à longue distance). Notre principale question est la suivante : comment les variantes de prononciation par changement de son sont-elles reconnues et représentées dans un lexique bilingue cantonais-anglais ? Les résultats des deux expériences suggèrent que les variantes initiales [n] et [l] facilitent le traitement dans la reconnaissance des mots parlés à court et à long terme. Ainsi, l'exposition régulière au cantonais confère aux auditeurs bilingues la flexibilité perceptive nécessaire à la mise en correspondance duale et progressive des variantes de prononciation avec une représentation lexicale unique.

Keywords

mergersCantonesemultilingualismword recognitionfusioncantonaismultilinguismereconnaissance des mots
Type
Short/En bref
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 69 , Issue 1 , March 2024 , pp. 99 - 117
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Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2024

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Footnotes

Thank you to everyone in the Speech in Context Lab for feedback on this work. We particularly thank Roger Lo for his contribution to the statistical analysis, and Fion Fung for technical assistance throughout the project.

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