| Convergent results from second language (L2) phonology literature suggest that when a phonetic or linguistic dimension is present or important in the first language (L1) of a learner, acquiring words that use this dimension in an L2 will be facilitated (Feature Hypothesis, McAllister, Flege & Piske, 2002). This study applies this hypothesis to the dimension of linguistic pitch by testing speakers from L1s which utilize lexically-contrastive pitch in varying manners and degrees---Mandarin Chinese, (using pitch as tone), Japanese (using pitch accent), English (using pitch in word stress), and finally Korean (not using pitch to distinguish words)---on their perception of Thai tones. Additionally, an L1-English-speaking group who learned Mandarin as an L2 was tested on their perception of Thai tones to examine whether they can transfer their acquired perception of Mandarin tones to the naive perception of Thai tones. This L2 Mandarin Learner group has also been tested on a lexical decision task composed of Mandarin words and non-words to determine their acquisition of L2 Mandarin tone.;Results show that lexically-contrastive pitch in the L1 does indeed influence the perception of a non-native lexically-contrastive pitch system, namely Thai tones. Furthermore, this influence differs in a hierarchical manner depending on the extent of the usage of lexically-contrastive pitch system. Second, results clearly demonstrate learning a tone language as an L2, i.e., Mandarin Chinese, by L1 speakers of English shapes the perception of a non-native tone language, i.e., Thai. Exposure to and accordingly encoding of Mandarin tones appear to be sufficiently robust to shape the naive perception of Thai tones. L2 Mandarin learners outperform non-learners of Mandarin who also speak English as an L1 and perform at comparable levels to L1 speakers of Mandarin on the naive perception of Thai tones. Furthermore, results show that learners are generally able to encode L2 tonal information in their lexical representations to the extent that lexical access is constrained. |
