Native and non-native lexical processing in Mandarin: pinyin and tone representation

Abstract

The nature of the Chinese mental lexicon is described in this theoretical paper, with a particular focus on the way in which Mandarin is represented and processed, especially with regard to tonal information. Because an alphabetic script (i.e., pinyin) is adopted in China at the earliest stages of reading acquisition, an account is given of the way in which alphabetic orthography is processed, using English as the example. Following from this, a framework for thinking about the processes involved in learning to read Chinese is presented and the impact of pinyin is considered. In particular, it is argued that knowledge of pinyin has an influence on the phonological component of the lexical processing system, especially in terms of separating the tone from the rest of the syllable. Past studies of Mandarin and Cantonese are used to provide evidence for the argument that pinyin modulates the phonological representation, with the added claim that the phonological system exists in order to generate a pronunciation. Spoken words are recognized through a separate system that is sensitive to the surface form, and it is here that there is a critical difference between native and non-native Mandarin speakers, especially those with a non-tonal first language. The inability to identify lexical tone in the speech signal, along with the representation of tone in pinyin as a diacritic separate from the letters, means that the non-native speaker has difficulty remembering what the correct tone is for any word they are trying to learn. The depiction of the lexical processing system that is presented in this paper is meant to provide a concrete framework for helping to understand the way in which both native and non-native speakers process Chinese words, especially when reading.