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The perceptual chunking of French ambiguous sentences by native speakers and Chinese L2 learners: A demonstration using ERP
Poster Session D, Saturday, September 13, 5:00 - 6:30 pm, Field House
Lei XI1; 1Laboratory of Phonetics and Phonology (CNRS & U. Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Prosodic phrasing cues, characterized by pitch variations, final lengthening and pauses at sentence boundaries, play a crucial role in speech perception and disambiguation. Across languages, acoustic cues are utilized differently to indicate prosodic boundaries. The main inquiry in L2 speech acquisition pertains to how learners exploit L2 prosodic cues to segment speech flow and resolve syntactic ambiguities. This study examined the segmentation of syntactically ambiguous French structures by both native speakers and Chinese L2 learners. An event-related potential (ERP) study was conducted to explore the Closure Positive Shift (CPS) component, which is associated with the processing of prosodic boundaries. Fifty pairs of French sentences with local ambiguity, featuring two distinct prosodic structures (e.g., Early Closure condition (EC): “Whenever the snake was eating # the rat would hide.” vs Late Closure condition (LC): “Whenever the snake was eating the rat # the rabbit would hide.”) (alongside fifty filler sentences) were used to examine the neurocognitive processing of prosodic boundaries (indicated by “#”). EEG signals were recorded from 20 French native speakers and 40 Chinese L2 learners (comprising 20 intermediate and 20 advanced proficiency levels) while they listened to these sentences. Our analysis revealed that both EC and LC prosodic boundary processing triggered the CPS component in all participants, reaching its peak approximately 500-600 ms after the onset of the final syllable preceding the intonational phrase boundary. Additionally, a noticeable topographic difference was observed between native speakers and learners, with natives exhibiting a central-parietal concentration and learners showing a centro-frontal concentration in learners. The consistent processing of prosodic boundaries across all participants, irrespective of their L1 background or L2 proficiency level is likely attributed to the prosodic universals in the marking of prosodic boundaries across languages. The subsequent cluster mass permutation test identified a significant cluster in the parietal region in the EC condition, distinguishing between native speakers and intermediate learners. However, no significant difference was found between natives and advanced learners. Moreover, in the LC condition, natives exhibited a “ramp-like negativity”, in response to the absence of early closure, indicating an anticipation of a late boundary based on preceding material and a top-down processing strategy. Interestingly, advanced learners displayed a reduced negativity, while intermediate learners did not show this effect. The lack of this negativity in Chinese L2 learners compared to native speakers suggests that learners’ prosodic processing relied solely on acoustic cues at final syllables before prosodic boundaries, indicating a bottom-up processing approach. This study is the first to replicate the CPS effect in native French speakers. The observed differences in CPS between natives and learners offer new insights into the neuroplasticity associated with the acquisition of French prosody by Chinese learners.
Topic Areas: Prosody, Language Development/Acquisition