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Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages
English and Mandarin Chinese differ in the voice onset times (VOTs) of /b/ and /p/. Hence the way bilinguals perceive these sounds may show ‘tuning’ to the language-specific acoustic structure of a bilingual’s languages (a discrete model), or a shared representation across languages (a unitary model...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8933432/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35304522 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08557-7 |
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author | Pan, Lei Ke, Han Styles, Suzy J. |
author_facet | Pan, Lei Ke, Han Styles, Suzy J. |
author_sort | Pan, Lei |
collection | PubMed |
description | English and Mandarin Chinese differ in the voice onset times (VOTs) of /b/ and /p/. Hence the way bilinguals perceive these sounds may show ‘tuning’ to the language-specific acoustic structure of a bilingual’s languages (a discrete model), or a shared representation across languages (a unitary model). We investigated whether an individual’s early childhood exposure influences their model of phoneme perception across languages, in a large sample of early English-Mandarin bilingual adults in Singapore (N = 66). As preregistered, we mapped identification functions on a /b/-/p/ VOT continuum in each language. Bilingual balance was estimated using principal components analysis and entered into GLMMs of phoneme boundary and slope. VOT boundaries were earlier for English than Mandarin, and bilingual balance predicted the slope of the transition between categories across both languages: Those who heard more English from an earlier age showed steeper category boundaries than those who heard more Mandarin, suggesting early bilinguals may transfer their model for how phonemes differ from their earlier/stronger languages to later/weaker languages. We describe the transfer model of discrete phoneme representations and its implications for use of the phoneme identification task in diverse populations. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8933432 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89334322022-03-28 Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages Pan, Lei Ke, Han Styles, Suzy J. Sci Rep Article English and Mandarin Chinese differ in the voice onset times (VOTs) of /b/ and /p/. Hence the way bilinguals perceive these sounds may show ‘tuning’ to the language-specific acoustic structure of a bilingual’s languages (a discrete model), or a shared representation across languages (a unitary model). We investigated whether an individual’s early childhood exposure influences their model of phoneme perception across languages, in a large sample of early English-Mandarin bilingual adults in Singapore (N = 66). As preregistered, we mapped identification functions on a /b/-/p/ VOT continuum in each language. Bilingual balance was estimated using principal components analysis and entered into GLMMs of phoneme boundary and slope. VOT boundaries were earlier for English than Mandarin, and bilingual balance predicted the slope of the transition between categories across both languages: Those who heard more English from an earlier age showed steeper category boundaries than those who heard more Mandarin, suggesting early bilinguals may transfer their model for how phonemes differ from their earlier/stronger languages to later/weaker languages. We describe the transfer model of discrete phoneme representations and its implications for use of the phoneme identification task in diverse populations. Nature Publishing Group UK 2022-03-18 /pmc/articles/PMC8933432/ /pubmed/35304522 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08557-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Pan, Lei Ke, Han Styles, Suzy J. Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
title | Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
title_full | Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
title_fullStr | Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
title_full_unstemmed | Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
title_short | Early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
title_sort | early linguistic experience shapes bilingual adults’ hearing for phonemes in both languages |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8933432/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35304522 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08557-7 |
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