Lexical tone in bilingual crosstalk

Spoken word recognition (SWR) is characterized by competition, as the lexical processor needs not only to interpret the unfolding speech input, but also to inhibit the activation of non-target candidates. This competition has been extended to investigations in bilingualism to understand how bilingual listeners recognize spoken words in one language that sound similar to words in the other. Lexical tones have been shown to provide independent cues for lexical access within a tonal language. If tones are crucial in SWR, a key question is whether this linguistic knowledge is utilized in bilingual SWR. To address this question, we used the Visual World Paradigm due to its temporally sensitive measures of lexical activation and competition. Through two experiments, we investigated whether lexical tones provided independent cues in cross-language lexical competition, compared to segments. In Exp1, we presented natural native English tokens to Mandarin-English listeners; while in Exp2, we presented synthesized English tokens with superimposed Mandarin tones. We observed larger competition effects when both segment and tone cues were available in the stimuli. These results first demonstrate the obligatory role of lexical tones in cross-language lexical competition in VWP.