First Advisor
Dr. Carolyn Quam
Date of Award
Spring 6-15-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Biology and University Honors
Department
Speech and Hearing Sciences
Language
English
Abstract
This line of research investigates attrition of native language (L1) Mandarin proficiency with increasing proficiency in English. English uses pitch to denote intonation (e.g., “it’s there?” versus “it’s there!”), while Mandarin additionally uses pitch to indicate word meanings; e.g., /he/ means “drink” when spoken with a high, level tone, or “river” when spoken with a rising tone. The present study delineates between two alternative explanations for the prior finding (Quam & Creel, 2017a) that English proficiency correlates with attrition of Mandarin tones, but not Mandarin vowels. This pattern could be explained by 1) assimilability of the Mandarin vowel contrasts used in the study into English categories (L1-L2 Assimilability Hypothesis), or 2) by tone being uniquely prone to attrition regardless of assimilability (Tone-Uniqueness Hypothesis). To distinguish these, participants completed an eye-tracked word-recognition task. They heard a spoken Mandarin word while viewing two images, and selected the image matching that word. The two images represented words differing in tone or vowel. Mandarin vowel contrasts were designed to be ‘easy’, ‘medium’, or ‘hard’ based on their assimilability into English. Preliminary results support the L1-L2 Assimilability Hypothesis, as proficiency in Mandarin is correlated with performance in less-assimilable vowel trials, not just in tone trials.
Recommended Citation
Robison, Natalie P., "Attrition and Assimilation: The Neural Mechanisms of Mandarin-English Bilingualism" (2024). University Honors Theses. Paper 1541.
Included in
Cognitive Science Commons, First and Second Language Acquisition Commons, Other Neuroscience and Neurobiology Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons