Native Language Experience Shapes Pre-attentive Foreign Tone Processing And Guides Rapid Memory Trace Build-up: An ERP Study Part 1

Abstract

Language experience, particularly from our native language (L1), shapes our perception of other languages around us. 

Language experience and memory are two inseparable factors. They promote and support each other. People with rich language experience tend to be better at memory, and people with strong memory will further enhance their language experience.

First, language experience will promote the improvement of memory. When a person learns a new language, he needs to constantly remember new words, grammatical rules, etc., and these require continuous repetition and memorization. This kind of learning process can not only exercise memory but also enable learners to gradually master a new language, thus enriching their language experience.

In addition, people with rich language experience are more likely to remember things in daily life. If a person is very familiar with the professional terms and concepts in a certain field, he will spend significantly less time and energy learning and memorizing the relevant knowledge. In addition, for people who are often exposed to a certain language, the various expressions and idiomatic sentences of this language will become more natural and fluent, making memory and understanding more natural and easier.

Finally, people with strong memories also further enhance their language experience. Because the stronger the memory, the better a person can organize, classify and connect different information in an organized manner, and quickly recall the information when needed. This ability is particularly important when learning a language because it allows learners to better remember and apply new words, phrases, and grammatical rules, thereby gradually accumulating a richer and more proficient language experience.

In short, although language experience and memory are different concepts, there is an inseparable relationship between them. Mastering a new language and exercising one's memory can bring many gains and advantages to people, and we should actively cultivate and improve them in our daily study and life. It can be seen that we need to improve memory, and Cistanche deserticola can significantly improve memory because Cistanche deserticola is a traditional Chinese medicinal material that has many unique effects, one of which is to improve memory. The efficacy of minced meat comes from the various active ingredients it contains, including acid, polysaccharides, flavonoids, etc. These ingredients can promote brain health in various ways.

Click know 10 ways to improve memory

The present study examined how L1 experience molds the initial processing of foreign (L2) tones during acquisition. In particular, we investigated whether learners could rapidly forge new neural memory traces for novel tonal words, which was tracked by recording learners' ERP responses during two-word acquisition sessions.
We manipulated the degree of L1–L2 familiarity by comparing learners with a nontonal L1 (German) and a tonal L1 (Swedish) and by using similar tones (fall) or dissimilar (high, low, rise) to those occurring in Swedish. Our results indicate that a rapid, pre-attentive memory trace buildup for tone manifests in an early ERP component at ~50 ms but only at particularly high levels of L1–L2 similarity. 

Specifically, early processing was facilitated for an L2 tone that had a familiar pitch shape (fall) and word-level function (inflection). This underlines the importance of these L1 properties for the early processing of L2 tone. 

In comparison, later anterior negativity related to the processing of the tones' grammatical content was unaffected by native language experience but was instead influenced by lexicality, pitch prominence, entrenchment, and successful learning. 

Behaviorally, learning effects emerged for all learners and tone types, regardless of L1–L2 familiarity or pitch prominence. Together, the findings suggest that while L1-based facilitation effects occur, they mainly affect early processing stages and do not necessarily result in more successful L2 acquisition at the behavioral level.

KEYWORDS

ERPs, L1–L2 similarity, pre-attentive lexicality effect, second-language acquisition, tone perception.

1 | INTRODUCTION

The sounds and rules of our native language influence how we perceive a foreign language when we are first exposed to it. If something functions as a lexical or grammatical cue in our native language (L1), we are likely to pay more attention to this type of information in a second language (L2) (Ellis & Sagarra, 2011). 

This is also argued to be the case with tone. For instance, listeners pay particular attention to pitch movement in a foreign language if their native language makes use of pitch movements to distinguish meaning (Gandour,  1983). 

The present study investigates whether L1 experience also affects the learners' neural responses to novel tone information. 

Furthermore, since in languages where tone is related to grammar, it can be argued to be more subtle and potentially less salient, we also addressed the role of L1 background in L2 acquisition for listeners whose native language uses tones to convey grammatical rather than lexical information.

1.1 | Tone

Between 40 and 70% of the world's languages are tonal (Maddieson, 2013; Yip, 2002), that is, they include pitch gestures that are added onto syllables or words to distinguish lexical items (lexical tone) or to add or strengthen grammatical information (grammatical tone). 

In a language like Mandarin, tone has a strong lexical function such that, for instance, the syllable ma produced with a high-level tone (T1) translates to "mother," while it means "horse" when produced with a fall-rise pitch contour (T3). 

In a language like Somali, on the other hand, tone has a strong grammatical function and, for example, the change from a non-high to a high tone on the ultimate vowel in a noun translates to a shift from nominative to genitive case (Banti, 1989). 

While both uses of tone contribute substantially to the language system, it might be argued that lexical tone is more salient and more strictly necessary than tone with a purely grammatical function. 

Unlike lexical tone languages, where tone can be realized on almost every syllable, in grammatical tone languages tones only occur in morphosyntactically licensed positions. 

Further, lexical content in the language is more fundamental than grammatical inflections, as suggested by letter detection studies where readers pay more attention to lexical word stems than grammatical affixes (Koriat et al.,  1991; Koriat & Greenberg,  1991). Carried over to the tonal domain, misuse or lack of tone might hinder communication more strongly for lexical tone than for grammatical tone. 

Consequentially, speakers of languages with mainly grammatical tone may rely slightly Between 40 and 70% of the world's languages are tonal (Maddieson, 2013; Yip, 2002), that is, they include pitch gestures that are added onto syllables or words to distinguish lexical items (lexical tone) or to add or strengthen grammatical information (grammatical tone). 

In a language like Mandarin, tone has a strong lexical function such that, for instance, the syllable ma produced with a high-level tone (T1) translates to "mother," while it means "horse" when produced with a fall-rise pitch contour (T3). In a language like Somali, on the other hand, tone has a strong grammatical function and, for example, the change from a non-high to a high tone on the ultimate vowel in a noun translates to a shift from nominative to genitive case (Banti, 1989). 

While both uses of tone contribute substantially to the language system, it might be argued that lexical tone is more salient and more strictly necessary than tone with a purely grammatical function. Unlike lexical tone languages, where tone can be realized on almost every syllable, in grammatical tone languages tones only occur in morphosyntactically licensed positions. 

Further, lexical content in the language is more fundamental than grammatical inflections, as suggested by letter detection studies where readers pay more attention to lexical word stems than grammatical affixes (Koriat et al.,  1991; Koriat & Greenberg,  1991). 

Carried over to the tonal domain, misuse or lack of tone might hinder communication more strongly for lexical tone than for grammatical tone. Consequentially, speakers of languages with a mainly grammatical tone may rely slightly less on the tones, although the tone is undoubtedly still highly entrenched.

Another important classification of tone is related to the tones' acoustic features. In this respect, tone languages are crudely divided into register and contour tone languages. In register tone languages, tones are predominantly distinguished concerning pitch level (e.g., Yoruba: high, mid, low), while contour tone languages distinguish tones according to pitch movement as well as pitch level (e.g., Cantonese: high, mid, low, mid-rise, low-rise, fall). 

Tone is perhaps most well-known in the East-Asian languages. Still, it also plays a vital role in many African and Native American languages and several European languages. While some tone languages are small or even facing extinction, others are thriving. 

The language with the largest number of native speakers in the world is tonal Mandarin Chinese (>920 million native language (L1) speakers, Eberhard et al., 2020).

One of the European languages to feature tone is Swedish. Swedish tones are traditionally described as pitch accents. ,

However, pitch accent languages have recently been questioned (e.g., Hyman,  2009, 2016). Therefore, we will briefly describe the tone system in its current state, focusing on the tones' important interaction with grammatical processes. Swedish has two lexically specified tones, "accent 1" and "accent 2" (these are often labeled in scientific texts by superscript numbers before the syllable associated with the tone, e.g.,1 munnen, 2 Munnar). 

Although the tones are realized on the stressed syllable of the word stem, their specification is based overwhelmingly on grammatical morphemes (Riad,  2014). Thus, accent 2 in 2 munn-ar, mouth-pl, "mouths" is realized on the stem mun(n), but related to the plural suffix -ar. In isolation, 1 mun, "mouth" carries accent 1 (Riad, 2014; Rischel, 1963). 

Thus, many suffixes induce a tone change to accent 2, leading to accent 2 being realized on the stem. Other suffixes are associated with accent 1 like the definite singular suffix -en, "the" in 1 Munn-en, and "the mouth." Since Swedish tones are chiefly specified for grammatical morphemes, their lexical function is marginal (Elert, 1972).

The majority of the few existing tonal minimal pairs emerge in inflected words due to homonymous suffixes that differ from each other concerning tone assignment (e.g., 1 gift-er, marry-prs, "marry/marries" vs 2 gift-er, poison-pl, "poisons" or 1 håll-et, direction-def, "the direction" vs 2håll-et, hold-pst. pp. sg, "held"; Elert, 1972). 

Importantly, the strong interaction with suffixes allows native listeners to use the tonal information on word stems to pre-activate possible upcoming word endings(Roll, 2015; Roll et al., 2013; Söderström et al., 2017). 

In consequence, tones in Swedish have been argued to be critical in the rapid differentiation of, for instance, singular and plural nouns in natural language comprehension.

Regarding the phonetic pitch shape of the Swedish tones, both accent 1 and accent 2 are characterized by a falling pitch contour (e.g., Bruce,  1977, 1983, 2005; Riad,  2014). 

Interestingly, the onset of the fall is earlier for accent 1 than for accent 2, although the exact timing differs between dialects (Figure 1). Central Swedish, the standard variety (type 2A), has the overall earliest pitch fall timing: it is so early that accent 1 is realized as a low tone on the word stem, and the preceding high tone becomes associated with the pretonic syllable. The word accents interact to some degree with sentence-level prosody, such as focus or boundary tones. 

Focus, for instance, produces an additional rise following the word accent fall in some dialects (type 2 in Figure 1) while it increases the range of the word accent fall in other dialects (type 1 in Figure 1).

1.2 | Tone and second language learning

The importance of tone in many languages in the world almost automatically entails a large number of people who acquire tone as part of a second language. In fact, for Mandarin alone, there are an estimated 200 million L2 speakers; and for Hausa, the largest African tone language, 25 million people are assumed to speak it as an L2 (Eberhard et al.,  2020). 

Learning a language with a nonnative tone is challenging, particularly for nontonal L1 speakers. Difficulties arise in L2 tone production and notably in tone perception. Problems in this context range from basic phonetic tone discrimination and identification abilities to the phonological, categorical use of tone necessary for the distinction of lexical items and grammatical features.
The process is likely hierarchical such that phonetic discrimination abilities need to be in place before phonological tone categories can be established and subsequently functionalized to identify and acquire tonally distinguished words or grammatical features (Wong & Perrachione, 2007). We will illustrate below how previous studies predominantly on lexical tone systems in Asia, have strengthened this claim.

1.2.1 | Behavioral indices of L2 tone acquisition

The majority of previous studies on tone acquisition have investigated behavioral correlations of tone identification or tone discrimination abilities in L2 tone learners. 

They have typically found that advanced learners can reach fairly high identification accuracies but still perform below native speakers, at least for some tones (Gottfried & Suiter, 1997; Pelzl et al., 2019). 

Importantly, successful tone identification ability predicts learners' ability to distinguish words at the lexical level (Ling & Grüter, 2020), but lexical recognition remains challenging even for learners who can confidently distinguish and identify tones (Pelzl et al.,  2019).
This is further complicated by phonetic variation within the phonological categories for tones, caused, for instance, by combinatorial constraints in nonmonosyllabic words (Chang & Bowles, 2015; Pelzl et al., 2019). 

Thus, as Wong and Perrachione (2007) suggest, low-level phonetic and phonological knowledge appears to be a requirement for the use of tones for lexical decisions. Interestingly, it has also been shown that once learners have made an association between a specific segmental and suprasegmental unit, they find it easier to re-access this particular association for further learning (Liu & Wiener, 2020). 

This shows that learners do not rely solely on phonological categories but also previously learned associations.

For more information:1950477648nn@gmail.com