Abstract
Contact between Standard Mandarin (SM) and regional Chinese varieties often gives rise to new varieties of Mandarin. Changsha Plastic Mandarin (CPM) is one such urban contact-induced variety shaped by the interaction between SM and the local Changsha dialect. Although segmentally close to SM, CPM differs more noticeably in its tonal and prosodic features. This talk asks how CPM is represented in the mental lexicon, to what extent it shares lexical representations with SM, and how listener experience shapes the processing of both varieties. Results from an auditory lexical decision task reveal robust identity priming overall, in both within- and across-variety conditions. Listeners familiar with CPM readily access both standard and dialectal forms, whereas those unfamiliar with CPM have greater difficulty processing dialectal forms. For the latter group, dialectal primes may facilitate access to standard targets, whereas standard primes do not necessarily facilitate access to dialectal targets. The talk concludes by considering how contact-induced variation can inform accounts of lexical representation, highlighting the role of listener experience in speech processing.
Biography
Dr. Aini Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Translation at City University of Hong Kong. Before joining CityU, she earned her PhD in Linguistics from University of Pennsylvania in 2024. Her research integrates sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics: She uses experimental and corpus approaches to examine cognitive mechanisms underlying the perception and production of sociostylistic variation. She has worked on perceptual aspects of cue integration in speech and social perception. Additionally, she has an interest in multi-dimensional dynamics of speech production in individuals. Her work has been published in multiple international peer-reviewed journals, including Behavior Research Methods, Language Variation and Change, Cognitive Science, Journal of Acoustical Society of America, and Laboratory Phonology.