2026-04-13T04:15:21Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:10230/682602025-12-22T13:33:34Zcom_2072_6col_2072_452952

00925njm 22002777a 4500 dc Timmer, Kalinka author Chen, Yiya author 2024-10-21T06:30:43Z 2024-10-21T06:30:43Z 2017 This study addressed the debate on the primacy of syllable vs. segment (i.e., phoneme) as a functional unit of phonological encoding in syllabic languages by investigating both behavioral and neural responses of Dutch-Cantonese (DC) bilinguals in a color-object picture naming task. Specifically, we investigated whether DC bilinguals exhibit the phonemic processing strategy, evident in monolingual Dutch speakers, during planning of their Cantonese speech production. Participants named the color of colored line-drawings in Cantonese faster when color and object matched in the first segment than when they were mismatched (e.g., 藍駱駝, /laam4/ /lok3to4/, “blue camel;” 紅饑駝, /hung4/ /lok3to4/, “red camel”). This is in contrast to previous studies in Sinitic languages that did not reveal such phoneme-only facilitation. Phonemic overlap also modulated the event-related potentials (ERPs) in the 125–175, 200–300, and 300–400 ms time windows, suggesting earlier ERP modulations than in previous studies with monolingual Sinitic speakers or unbalanced Sinitic-Germanic bilinguals. Conjointly, our results suggest that, while the syllable may be considered the primary unit of phonological encoding in Sinitic languages, the phoneme can serve as the primary unit of phonological encoding, both behaviorally and neurally, for DC bilinguals. The presence/absence of a segment onset effect in Sinitic languages may be related to the proficiency in the Germanic language of bilinguals. The authors would like to thank Simwayn Tran for the material selection, both Simwayn Tran and Eva Leusink for recruiting participants and running the experiment, and Eric Shek and Peggy Mok for checking the stimuli. Preparation of this manuscript was partially supported by the Rubicon grant 446-14-006 from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded to the first author KT, and by the ERC Starting Grant 206198 from the European Research Council (ERC) awarded to the last author YC. Speech production Bilingualism Segmental processing Syllabic processing EEG/ERP Dutch-Cantonese bilinguals show segmental processing during sinitic language production