One written system, two speech languages-in a case of Taiwan languages

A Chinese character is known for its representative of at least one semantic meaning, while its pronunciation could vary from Mandarin to other Chinese dialects. The language mode proposed by Grosjean (1998:137, 2001)... [ view full abstract ]

A Chinese character is known for its representative of at least one semantic meaning, while its pronunciation could vary from Mandarin to other Chinese dialects. The language mode proposed by Grosjean (1998:137, 2001) encompasses spoken and written language to introduce the bilingual activation of two-dimensional representation. Since a Chinese character would always induce a corresponding Mandarin pronunciation, which is considered as a base language during the reading. When Taiwan Southern Min (TSM) and Taiwan Hai-Lu Hakka (THH), guest languages, were asked to read the same Chinese character, what happens to those guest languages’ pronunciations?

Two production experiments participated by 21 TSM/THH-Mandarin bilinguals (dominant in Mandarin and THH by self-reporting respectively), while the words were categorized as either high or low phonological neighborhood density (PND) according to TSM/THH pronunciations respectively. Contradicted to what Tsai (2007) has found that the words with high PND associated with Mandarin pronunciations have a larger vowel space, this study found that both TSM/THH-Mandarin bilinguals produced words associated with TSM/THH pronunciations with low PND expanded its vowel space.

When a vowel within the word with fewer neighbors and it is produced with guest languages in a peripheral position, it implies this word pronounced in guest languages is less activated, because speakers intend to hyper-articulate less activated word for a better communication. That explains why low PND words associated with guest languages with a larger vowel space. The language mode continuum explains how one written system and a multi-language speech mode interact during a reading process. To sum up, the base language reveals a similar pattern to that of monolinguals, while the guest languages show a different psycholinguistic phenomenon.