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Language experience, particularly from our native language (L1), shapes our perception of other languages around us. The present study examined how L1 experience moulds the initial processing of foreign (L2) tone during acquisition. In particular, we investigated whether learners were able to rapidly forge new neural memory traces for novel tonal words, which was tracked by recording learners' ERP responses during two word acquisition sessions. We manipulated the degree of L1–L2 familiarity by comparing learners with a nontonal L1 (German) and a tonal L1 (Swedish) and by using tones that were similar (fall) or dissimilar (high, low, rise) to those occurring in Swedish. Our results indicate that a rapid, pre‐attentive memory trace build‐up for tone manifests in an early ERP component at ~50 ms but only at particularly high levels of L1–L2 similarity. Specifically, early processing was facilitated for an L2 tone that had a familiar pitch shape (fall) and word‐level function (inflection). This underlines the importance of these L1 properties for the early processing of L2 tone. In comparison, a later anterior negativity related to the processing of the tones' grammatical content was unaffected by native language experience but was instead influenced by lexicality, pitch prominence, entrenchment, and successful learning. Behaviorally, learning effects emerged for all learners and tone types, regardless of L1–L2 familiarity or pitch prominence. Together, the findings suggest that while L1‐based facilitation effects occur, they mainly affect early processing stages and do not necessarily result in more successful L2 acquisition at behavioral level. Our findings add important evidence that contributes to answering the open question of how similarity between native and target language influences target language processing and acquisition. We found facilitative effects of similarity only at pre‐attentive levels and only when the degree of similarity was high. Late processing and successful acquisition, on the other hand, were unaffected by the target words' similarity to native language properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Native speakers of Swedish use tones on stems to predict which suffix is to follow. This is seen behaviorally in reduced response times for matching tone-suffix pairs. Neurophysiologically, online prediction is reflected in the event-related potential (ERP) component pre-activation negativity (PrAN) occurring for tones with a higher predictive value. Invalid suffixes relative to the tone produce a left anterior negativity (LAN), or a broadly distributed negativity, and a P600. When native speakers make decisions about the inflection of words, response times are also longer for invalid tone-suffix combinations. In this study, low to intermediate level second language learners with non-tonal native languages trained tone-suffix associations for two weeks. Before and after training, they participated in a perception test where they listened to nouns with valid and invalid tone-suffix combinations and performed a singular/plural judgment task. During the test, electroencephalography (EEG) and response times were measured. After training, the PrAN effect increased, and a LAN emerged for invalid stimuli, indicating that the participants had acquired the tone-suffix association, using the tones as predictors more extensively post-training. However, neither a P600 nor longer response times for invalidity were found, suggesting potential differences in native and second language processing of the tone-suffix association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphosyntactic nature of word accents in Swedish makes them a perfect candidate for the study of predictive processing in language. The association of word stem accents with upcoming suffixes allows native listeners to pre-activate a word's potential ending and thereby facilitate speech processing. Unlike native speakers, second language learners are known to be less able to use prediction in their L2s. This is presumably due in particular to competing information from the learners' L1 and a poorer exposure to the relevant L2 information. Swedish word accents, however, are abundant in the input and rare cross-linguistically, making them ideal for studying the implicit acquisition of linguistic prediction in beginner L2 learners. We therefore recorded learners' electrophysiological brain responses to Swedish word accents and compared them to those of native speakers. In the native speaker group, a pronounced suffix-related PrAN (pre-activation negativity), N400 and a P600-like late positivity indicate predictive processing. The learners, however, only produced a late (400–600 ms) centrally distributed negativity for word accent processing, remarkably similar to the deflection for pure pitch height differences found in the same subject group. Crucially, correlation analysis indicated that this negativity increased (at right-lateral electrode sites) for learners with increased level of Swedish proficiency. We conclude that, to allow L2 tone-suffix association and to enable its predictive capacity, the acquisition of Swedish word accents and their predictive properties might first involve dissociation of word tones from the default L1 tonal patterns as well as sensitisation to pitch height differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the relationship between linguistic tone processing and cortical thickness of bilateral planum temporale (PT) and pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFGpo). Swedish tones on word stems function as cues to upcoming endings. Correlating structural brain imaging data with participants' response time patterns for suffixes, we found that thicker cortex in the left PT was associated with greater reliance on tones to anticipate upcoming inflections on real words. On inflected pseudoword stems, however, the cortical thickness of left IFGpo was associated with tone-suffix processing. Thus cortical thickness of the left PT might play a role in processing tones as part of stored representations for familiar speech segments, most likely when inflected forms are accessed as whole words. In the absence of stored representations, listeners might need to rely on morphosyntactic rules specifying tone-suffix associations, potentially facilitated by greater cortical thickness of left IFGpo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Swedish word accents can be used as a measure of perceptual phonological proficiency. • Cortical thickness and surface area correlate with perceptual phonological proficiency. • Swedish word accents influence word and phrase recognition in the ventral speech processing stream. Lack of methods to experimentally assess the perceptual processing of sound features and allow one to measure differences in phonological proficiency has been a limitation for speech processing studies in native speakers. Tonal features associated with Swedish word-stems, word accents, which cue grammatical suffixes, constitute, however, such sound features that can be exploited to generate measures of reliance on morphosyntactically relevant phonological information during word processing. Specifically, there is a natural variance between native speakers in response time (RT) difference between phonologically valid and invalid word accent-suffix combinations that can be used to quantify perceptual phonological proficiency. This study uses ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate word accents as phonological cues to morphosyntactic meaning. The study adds to the understanding of the neural basis for both morphosyntactically relevant phonological cues by reporting correlations between differences in listeners' RT for validly and invalidly cued suffixes and cortical thickness in left anterior and middle temporal gyrus, and the left anterior superior temporal sulcus as well as cortical surface area in the left middle and inferior temporal gyri. The cortical areas studied are known constituents of the ventral speech processing stream, necessary for word and phrase recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Event-related potentials suggest acquisition of grammatical tone within 20 min. • Transfer plays a role in how morphosyntactic tone is processed initially. • Tonal learners draw on native tone-morphosyntax network: early automatic processing. • Non-tonal learners are not initially able to elicit early processing components. • Non-tonal learners require consolidation period for mid-latency processing to occur. Initial second language acquisition proceeds surprisingly quickly. Foreign words can sometimes be used within minutes after the first exposure. Yet, it is unclear whether such rapid learning also takes place for more complex, multi-layered properties like words with complex morphosyntax and/or tonal features, and whether it is influenced by transfer from the learners' native language. To address these questions, we recorded tonal and non-tonal learners' brain responses while they acquired novel tonal words with grammatical gender and number on two consecutive days. Comparing the novel words to repeated but non-taught pseudoword controls, we found that tonal learners demonstrated a full range of early and late event-related potentials in novel tonal word processing: an early word recognition component (~50 ms), an early left anterior negativity (ELAN), a left anterior negativity (LAN), and a P600. Non-tonal learners exhibited mainly late processing when accessing the meaning of the tonal words: a P600, as well as a LAN after an overnight consolidation. Yet, this group displayed correlations between pitch perception abilities and ELAN, and between acquisition accuracy and LAN, suggesting that certain features may lead to facilitated processing of tonal words in non-tonal learners. Furthermore, the two groups displayed indistinguishable performance at the behavioural level, clearly suggesting that the same learning outcome may be achieved through at least partially different neural mechanisms. Overall, the results suggest that it is possible to rapidly acquire words with grammatical tone and that transfer plays an important role even in very early second language acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]