SENSITIVITY TO VOWEL, CONSONANT AND TONE VARIATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD: EVIDENCE FROM 6-YEAR-OLD MANDARIN MONOLINGUALS AND ENGLISH-MANDARIN BILINGUALS

Abstract

Although tone language learners represent the linguistic majority, much less is known about how tones are integrated into lexical representations in comparison to more typically studied vowels and consonants. Most of the previous work investigating lexical processing in tone language learners has focused on infants and toddlers. A key finding from this research is that tone information seems to be assigned less lexical priority than vowels and consonants and that this ‘downweighting’ of tone increases with age. In a series of word recognition studies, Mandarin monolinguals and Mandarin-English bilinguals were tested on their sensitivity to tones versus to vowels and consonants. In order to investigate the development of phonological sensitivities, 5.5 to 6.5 year old Mandarin learners were sampled. Results reveal asynchronous influences of vowel, consonant and tone variation on spoken word recognition during the kindergarten years, as well as effects of language background (bilingual/monolingual) on sensitivity to phonological variation.