Cantonese-English Bilinguals Research Articles

Bilingual word familiarity in Cantonese and English

Bilingual speakers are typically unbalanced in their vocabularies in each language, with each language’s lexicon being representative of the experiences and domains in which the bilingual uses that language. This can create a challenge in creating word lists for speech experiments, as the frequency counts from publicly available corpora do not represent the appropriate vocabulary domains. In this paper, we report on a word familiarity rating task in Cantonese and English that was designed to pretest stimuli in both languages to confirm the items were matched in familiarity for use in subsequent speech tasks. Participants fell into four different groups: Cantonese-English bilinguals who grew up in a Cantonese-dominant location, Cantonese-English bilinguals who grew up in an English-dominant location, North American English speakers with no Chinese language experience, and international English speakers with no Chinese language experience. All listeners were presented with blocks of Cantonese words/nonwords and English words/nonwords and were asked to rate the familiarity of each item. We compare these ratings across participant groups and in relation to corpora for each language to assess how the listener groups perform. We discuss these results in the context of designing stimuli lists that are appropriate for diverse, multilingual populations.

Effect of monolingualism and bilingualism in the anterior cingulate cortex: a proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy study in two centers

Reports of an advantage of bilingualism on brain structure in young adult participants are inconsistent. Abutalebi et al. (2012) reported more efficient monitoring of conflict during the Flanker task in young bilinguals compared to young monolingual speakers. The present study compared young adult (mean age = 24) Cantonese-English bilinguals in Hong Kong and young adult monolingual speakers. We expected (a) differences in metabolites in neural tissue to result from bilingual experience, as measured by 1H-MRS at 3T, (b) correlations between metabolic levels and Flanker conflict and interference effects (c) different associations in bilingual and monolingual speakers. We found evidence of metabolic differences in the ACC due to bilingualism, specifically in metabolites Cho, Cr, Glx and NAA. However, we found no significant correlations between metabolic levels and conflict and interference effects and no significant evidence of differential relationships between bilingual and monolingual speakers. Furthermore, we found no evidence of significant differences in the mean size of conflict and interference effects between groups i.e. no bilingual advantage. Lower levels of Cho, Cr, Glx and NAA in bilingual adults compared to monolingual adults suggest that the brains of bilinguals develop greater adaptive control during conflict monitoring because of their extensive bilingual experience.***Efeito do monolinguismo e do bilinguismo no córtex anterior cingulado: um estudo de espectroscopia de ressonância magnética de prótons em dois centros***Relatos de uma vantagem do bilinguismo na estrutura cerebral em jovens participantes adultos são inconsistentes. Abutalebi et al. (2012) relataram uma monitorização mais eficiente do conflito durante a tarefa de Flanker em jovens bilíngues comparados com jovens monolíngues. O presente trabalho comparou jovem adultos (idade média = 24) bilíngues em Cantonês-Inglês de Hong Kong e jovens monolíngues adultos. Estávamos a contar com (a) diferenças em metabólitos no tecido neural como resultado de uma experiência bilíngue, medido pelo 3T 1H-MRS, (b) correlações entre os níveis metabólicos, conflito Flanker e efeitos de interferência (c) diferentes associações em falantes monolíngues e bilíngues. Encontramos evidências de diferenças metabólicas no ACC devido ao bilinguismo, especificamente nos metabólitos Cho, Cr, Gly e NAA. Porém, não constatamos correlações significativas entre os níveis metabólicos e efeitos de conflito e interferência e nenhuma evidência significativa de relações diferenciais entre falantes monolíngues e bilíngues. Além disso, não encontramos nenhuma evidência de diferenças significativas no tamanho médio dos efeitos do conflito e interferência entre os grupos, ou seja, nenhuma vantagem bilíngue. Níveis inferiores de Cho, Cr, Gly em adultos bilíngues em comparação com adultos monolíngues sugerem que o cérebro dos bilíngues desenvolve maior controle adaptativo durante a monitorização do conflito por causa da sua extensa experiência bilíngue.

Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution of Cantonese-English Bilinguals: Evidence from Prepositional Phrase and Adverb

Syntactic ambiguity resolution is influenced by multiple constraints. A sentence-picture matching task tested the attachment of prepositional phrase (PP) such as on the chair within an utterance like Mary ate the apple on the chair. PP attaching to NP2 (the apple) is called low attachment (LA), while PP attaching to V (ate) is called high attachment (HA). A comprehension task tested the attachment of adverb such as quickly within an utterance like the story Mary was reading quickly put her little sister into sleep. The checked adverbs attaching to the verb of the embedded clause (VEC) and to the verb of the main clause (VMC) were analyzed. Cantonese-English bilinguals were grouped according to their L2 proficiency. Results reflected that 1) both groups showed preference to HA for PP, 2) LP group showed preference to VMC for adverb attachment; 3) there is a large gap in LA between LP and HP, suggesting that syntactic ambiguity resolution involves interaction of all the information available. The relationship between language proficiency and parsing is not so definitely supported by the results.

Wor(l)ds apart – does the N400 reflect bilingual language distance and meaning in translation? An ERP study of the effects of L1-L2 distance and translation direction in German-English and Cantonese-English bilinguals.

Wor(l)ds apart – does the N400 reflect bilingual language distance and meaning in translation? An ERP study of the effects of L1-L2 distance and translation direction in German-English and Cantonese-English bilinguals.

The development of aspectual marking in Cantonese-English bilingual children

AbstractThe present study investigates whether the tense-aspect development of Cantonese-English bilingual children conforms to the Aspect Hypothesis (Andersen and Shirai 1994. Discourse motivations for some cognitive acquisition principles.Studies in Second Language Acquisition16(2). 133–156.), which has been shown to predict the development of monolingual children of many different languages well, and whether the two languages influence each other during development. Analysis of longitudinal production data from three Cantonese-English bilinguals (Yip and Matthews 2000. Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese-English bilingual child.Bilingualism: Language and Cognition3(3). 193–208.) shows that the development of bilingual children resemble that of monolingual children and generally follow the Aspect Hypothesis, but to a lesser degree. Interactions were also observed in that the acquisition of the Cantonese progressive markerganwas accelerated by the-ingin the bilingual children, and transfer from Cantonese to English allowed them to use the English past tense marking with verbs of different lexical aspect early in their development, deviating from the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis.

English Verb Accuracy of Bilingual Cantonese-English Preschoolers.

Knowledge of verb development in typically developing bilingual preschoolers may inform clinicians about verb accuracy rates during the 1st 2 years of English instruction. This study aimed to investigate tensed verb accuracy in 2 assessment contexts in 4- and 5-year-old Cantonese-English bilingual preschoolers. The sample included 47 Cantonese-English bilinguals enrolled in English preschools. Half of the children were in their 1st 4 months of English language exposure, and half had completed 1 year and 4 months of exposure to English. Data were obtained from the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (Rice & Wexler, 2001) and from a narrative generated in English. By the 2nd year of formal exposure to English, children in the present study approximated 33% accuracy of tensed verbs in a formal testing context versus 61% in a narrative context. The use of the English verb BE approximated mastery. Predictors of English third-person singular verb accuracy were task, grade, English expressive vocabulary, and lemma frequency. Verb tense accuracy was low across both groups, but a precocious mastery of BE was observed. The results of the present study suggest that speech-language pathologists may consider, in addition to an elicitation task, evaluating the use of verbs during narratives in bilingual Cantonese-English bilingual children.

An fMRI study of executive control during translation and oral reading in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers

An fMRI study of executive control during translation and oral reading in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers

“Bits”, “chunks” and “channel-switching”: Perceptions of Cantonese-English code-switching

This paper compares the code-switching (CS) practices and perceptions of three groups of Cantonese-English bilinguals with different social backgrounds: (1) university-educated Hong Kong locals, (2) second-generation migrants in English-speaking countries and (3) Hong Kong students who have spent a significant amount of time in English-speaking countries at school and/or university. The results show that far from agreeing on what constitutes a normal CS style, each of these groups has different normative perceptual contours, and distinct CS practices. This finding is shown to be significant within the social context of the Hong Kong speech community, which has reabsorbed a great deal of the Cantonese-English speaking diaspora in recent years. The consequences of this reabsorption are also shown to be important for our current models of CS variation. 提要: 本文透過研究三個不同社會背景的雙語 (廣東話–英 語) 組別: 1. 大學畢業的香港本土人士; 2. 移居香港的英語人士的第二代及 3. 曾長期留學英語國家學校/大學的畢業生, 探討雙語轉換的實踐及觀念。結果顯示做成正常的雙語轉換在每一個組別間皆含有合乎規範的觀念輪廓及截然不同的慣例。是次發現明確的顯示了在香港的語言群體中, 近年有著重新吸收大量廣東話–英語的大流散, 其結果往往對現時的雙語轉換變化模式有著重要的揭示。

A Tale of Two Features: Perception of Cantonese Lexical Tone and English Lexical Stress in Cantonese-English Bilinguals.

This study investigated the similarities and differences in perception of Cantonese tones and English stress patterns by Cantonese-English bilingual children, adults, and English monolingual adults. All three groups were asked to discriminate pairs of syllables that minimally differed in either Cantonese tone or in English stress. Bilingual children’s performance on tone perception was comparable to their performance on stress perception. By contrast, bilingual adults’ performance on tone perception was lower than their performance on stress perception, and there was a similar pattern in English monolingual adults. Bilingual adults tended to perform better than English monolingual adults on both the tone and stress perception tests. A significant correlation between tone perception and stress perception performance was found in bilingual children but not in bilingual adults. All three groups showed lower accuracy in the high rising-low rising contrast than any of the other 14 Cantonese tone contrasts. The acoustic analyses revealed that average F0, F0 onset, and F0 major slope were the critical acoustic correlates of Cantonese tones, whereas multiple acoustic correlates were salient in English stress, including average F0, spectral balance, duration and intensity. We argue that participants’ difficulty in perceiving high rising-low rising contrasts originated from the contrasts’ similarities in F0 onset and average F0; indeed the difference between their major slopes was the only cue with which to distinguish them. Acoustic-perceptual correlation analyses showed that although the average F0 and F0 onset were associated with tone perception performance in all three groups, F0 major slope was only associated with tone perception in the bilingual adult group. These results support a dynamic interactive account of suprasegmental speech perception by emphasizing the positive prosodic transfer between Cantonese tone and English stress, and the role that level of bilingual language experience and age play in shaping suprasegmental speech perception.

Phonetic divergence in bilingual speakers is modulated by language attitude

Bilingual speakers’ speech varies phonetically according to many factors such as age of arrival and of acquisition of the second language (L2) (e.g., Flege et al., 1999). However, such temporal factors may not be as relevant to populations with more uniform language experience, as in pervasively multilingual societies. In such diglossic situations, speakers’ attitudes toward each of their languages may have a stronger influence on everyday pronunciation, as they do for language learning (Moyer, 2007) and phonetic accommodation to interlocutors (Dmitrieva et al., 2015). This study was designed to determine whether bilingual speakers’ attitude toward their language(s) and associated culture(s) modulates phonetic properties of their speech. Native Cantonese-English bilinguals living in Hong Kong (N = 20) produced near homophones in both languages under conditions emphasizing each language on different days. The degree of diphthongization of Cantonese /o/ and English /oʊ/, and Cantonese /aɪ/ and English /ɑɪ/ were quantified acoustically and compared to attitude scores elicited in a questionnaire. Participants with a more positive attitude toward Cantonese showed larger cross-language differences in diphthongization of these pairs, demonstrating an effect of language attitude on phonetic properties of speech and highlighting the contribution of sociolinguistic factors to phonetic variability in diglossic contexts.

The neuroprotective effects of bilingualism upon the inferior parietal lobule: A Structural Neuroimaging Study in Aging Chinese Bilinguals

Abstract It is a timely issue to understand the impact of bilingualism upon brain structure in healthy aging and upon cognitive decline given evidence of its neuroprotective effects. Plastic changes induced by bilingualism were reported in young adults in the left inferior parietal lobule (LIPL) and its right counterpart (RIPL) (Mechelli et al., 2004). Moreover, both age of second language (L2) acquisition and L2 proficiency correlated with increased grey matter (GM) in the LIPL/RIPL. However it is unknown whether such findings replicate in older bilinguals. We examined this question in an aging bilingual population from Hong Kong. Results from our Voxel Based Morphometry study show that elderly bilinguals relative to a matched monolingual control group also have increased GM volumes in the inferior parietal lobules underlining the neuroprotective effect of bilingualism. However, unlike younger adults, age of L2 acquisition did not predict GM volumes. Instead, LIPL and RIPL appear differentially sensitive to the effects of L2 proficiency and L2 exposure with LIPL more sensitive to the former and RIPL more sensitive to the latter. Our data also intimate that such differences may be more prominent for speakers of languages that are linguistically closer such as in Cantonese-Mandarin bilinguals as compared to Cantonese-English bilinguals.

Acoustic correlates of bilingualism: Relating phonetic production to language experience and attitudes

Researchers tend to quantify degree of bilingualism according to age-related factors such as age of acquisition (Flege, et al. 1999, Yeni-Komshian, et al. 2000). However, previous research suggests that bilinguals may also show different degrees of accent and patterns of phonetic interaction between their first language (L1) and second language (L2) as a result of factors such as the quantity and quality of L2 input (Flege & Liu, 2001), amount of L1 vs. L2 use (Flege, et al. 1999), and attitude toward each language (Moyer, 2007). The goal of this study is to identify gradient properties of speech production that can be related to gradient language experience and attitudes in a bilingual population that is relatively homogeneous in terms of age-related factors. Native Cantonese-English bilinguals living in Hong Kong produced near homophones in both languages under conditions emphasizing one language or the other on different days. Acoustic phonetic variables related to phonological inventory differences between the two languages, including lexical tone/stress, syllable length, nasality, fricative manner and voicing, release of stop, voice onset time, and vowel quality and length, will be quantified and compared to results from a detailed survey of individual speakers’ experience and attitudes toward the two languages.

Interactions of cultural identity and turn-taking organisation

Conversation Analysis (CA) has been used to reveal cultural groups with which an individual identifies him- or herself as interactants are found to practice identity group categories in discourse. In this study, a CA approach — the organisation of turn-taking in particular — was adopted to explore how a senior Chinese immigrant in Australia perceived her own identity through naturally occurring conversations with two local secondary school students, one being a non-Chinese-background English monolingual and the other a Chinese-background Cantonese-English bilingual. How the senior initiated and allocated her turns in four conversations is taken to reflect the way in which she perceived herself and her relationship with her interlocutor(s). The findings suggest that the senior’s cultural identity is not static but emerging and constructed in the conversations with her interlocutors over interactive activities. As such, this study contributes to our understanding of the nature of identity and the role of conversational interaction in negotiating cultural identities.

Relationships Among Language Ideologies, Family Language Policies, and Children's Language Achievement: A Look at Cantonese-English Bilinguals in the U.S

This article examines the reported language ideologies and family language policies of the parents of Cantonese-English bilinguals in the U.S. in relation to their children's achievement scores in Cantonese and English. We explore the relationships first by language of instruction. Results show children in bilingual classrooms scored higher than those in mainstream (English-only) classrooms on the Cantonese tasks, but significantly more children in bilingual programs had Cantonese as a home language than children in mainstream classrooms. Parents from mainstream classrooms were significantly more satisfied with their children's English-language attainment than parents from bilingual classrooms. Using cluster analysis, we then identify four new groups of children based on their language proficiency: (a) English-dominant, (b) Cantonese-dominant, (c) “balanced bilingual,” and (d) “ideal bilingual.” Results show all children scored at or above the monolingual English mean on English decoding, but the ideal bilingual cluster had the largest Cantonese vocabulary. The English-dominant group heard significantly less Cantonese in the home, while all children in the ideal bilingual and Cantonese-dominant clusters heard only Cantonese. Findings point to the integral component of the family unit in children's bilingual development and bring up timely issues relating to family language planning and policy.

Degree of conversational code-switching enhances verbal task switching in Cantonese–English bilinguals

The study examined individual differences in code-switching to determine the relationship between code-switching frequency and performance in verbal and non-verbal task switching. Seventy-eight Cantonese–English bilinguals completed a semi-structured conversation to quantify natural code-switching, a verbal fluency task requiring language switching, and two non-verbal switching tasks. Participants who engaged in more conversational code-switching showed smaller costs in verbal task switching than those who switched languages less frequently. Participants performed similarly to bilinguals in previous studies on non-verbal switching tasks, but in this case performance was not linked to the degree of conversational code switching. The difference in the influence of code-switching for verbal and non-verbal executive control tasks indicates a dissociation between domains for the mechanism of task switching.

Perception of Individuals With Voice Disorders by Monolingual English, Bilingual Cantonese–English, and Bilingual Russian–English Women

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of monolingual English, bilingual Cantonese-English, and bilingual Russian-English speakers toward individuals with voice disorders. In a mixed experimental design, a total of 30 older and 29 younger female listeners from the 3 language groups rated the voices of 10 females, each with a mild, moderate, or severe voice disorder or with no voice disorder. A semantic differential scale was used to rate the speakers on 21 attributes. Results indicate that the perception of individuals became increasingly negative as the severity of the disorder increased. Results also indicate that Cantonese-English bilinguals rated the individuals with severe voice disorders more negatively than did English monolinguals and that the language groups differed in their ratings for the attributes of beautiful, lovable, clean, and young. There was no overall effect of age of listener. The study demonstrates that although the language groups were uniform in ascribing more negative attributes to individuals as severity of the disorder increased, there were also significant differences between the groups. Exploration of these issues provides information useful to clinicians in setting priorities for intervention that take into account individuals' backgrounds as well as clinical factors.

Bilingual education & biligualism

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L2 vs. L3 initial state: A comparative study of the acquisition of French DPs by Vietnamese monolinguals and Cantonese–English bilinguals

This paper compares the initial state of second language acquisition (L2A) and third language acquisition (L3A) from the generative linguistics perspective. We examine the acquisition of the Determiner Phrase (DP) by two groups of beginning French learners: an L2 group (native speakers of Vietnamese who do not speak any English) and an L3 group (native speakers of Cantonese who are also proficient L2 English users). Two current competing models in the field of theoretical second language acquisition, namely Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) and the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH) are compared and their extension to L3A evaluated. Results point to full transfer of L1 in the L2 initial state and partial transfer of L2 in the L3 initial state. The L3 group performed significantly better than the L2 group on most of the properties tested. We suggest that these findings are not totally consistent with either FTFA or FFFH, but argue that they crucially demonstrate that L3A is not simply another case of L2A because transfer in L3A does not necessarily always come from L1.