Poster Slam Session D, Wednesday, August 21, 2019, 5:00 - 5:15 pm, Finlandia Hall, Emily Myers
Syllabic and phonemic effects in Chinese spoken language production: Evidence from ERPs
Qingqing Qu1,2, Chen Feng1,2, Markus Damian3;1Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 2Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 3School of Psychology Science, University of Bristol
Existing models of language production generally appeal to phonemes, but the bulk of evidence comes from speakers of European languages in which the orthographic system codes explicitly for sound-sized segments. By contrast, in languages with non-alphabetic scripts such as Mandarin Chinese, individual speech sounds are not orthographically represented, raising the possibility that speakers of these languages do not use phonemes as functional units. Indeed, recent studies from behavioral measurements have suggested that language rely differentially on different phonological planning units in spoken word production: Speakers of alphabetic languages use phoneme as primary processing unit when they produce words, whereas syllable constitutes primary units of phonological encoding for speakers of Chinese. However, in the previous work with electrophysiological measurement (EEG) (Qu, Damian, Kazanina, 2012, 2013, PNAS), we have provided preliminary evidence for phonemic representations for Chinese, contrasts with a number of reported null behavioral findings concerning the role of the phoneme in Chinese. This preliminary evidence required further confirmation. More importantly, the critical question arises, then, as to in which ways and when are the two types of phonological representations activated. In Experiment 1, we used event-related potentials combined with the form preparation task that is widely used in the literature on spoken word production, and has provided critical evidence regarding phonemic presentations in Indo-European languages. Chinese speakers named pictures which were blocked by initial phoneme overlap so that picture name shared the initial phoneme or were phonologically unrelated in a block. Whereas naming latencies were unaffected by phoneme overlap, ERP responses were modulated from 230-360 ms after object onset. In Experiment 2, we adopted the identical task in which object names overlapped in their word-initial syllable or word-initial phoneme, or not. Participants' naming responses were faster when object names in a block shared their word-initial syllable, and were not modulated by word-initial phonemic overlap, which is consistent with previous findings from behavioural studies. ERP responses were influenced by syllabic overlap from 190-300 ms after object onset and from 180-340 ms by phonemic overlap. We interpret these results as evidence for the claim that phonemic segments constitute fundamental units of phonological encoding in Chinese spoken word production. The finding that access to syllabic information began in parallel with phonemic processing around 180 ms indicates early parallel activation of syllabic and phonemic representations in Chinese word production.
Themes: Language Production, Phonology and Phonological Working Memory
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)
Poster D55