| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班 === 104 === Previous studies have shown that the main difference between Sixian Hakka and Hailu Hakka lies in the tonal system (Chung, 2006; Hsu, 2007) and that these tonal differences can cause communication difficulties between speakers of the two dialects (Chung, 2007). However, segmental differences are also found between Sixian and Hailu (Huang, 2005; Chung, 2006; Lyu, 2007). In this study, two form-priming experiments are used investigate how changes in segmental and tonal makeup influence Hailu Hakka native speakers’ perception. Findings from these experiments showed that participants take longer to respond to a target stimulus when tonal information is altered, suggesting that tonal differences interfere with Hailu Hakka speakers’ lexical processing. Segmental differences also increased the time taken for word recognition; however, the slow-down in response time was not nearly as significant as the one elicited by tonal differences, suggesting that segmental differences are easier to process for Hailu Hakka speakers than tonal differences. Further comparisons between Sixian–Hailu segmental differences in consonantal onsets versus vowel nuclei showed that only differences in consonantal onsets yield significant facilitation in lexical decision-making, while vocalic differences do not, suggesting that vowel differences are a main cause for lexical processing difficulty between the two dialects. These findings may be attributed to phonetic similarity (Connine et al., 1993). The results also showed an effect of age and language background. Taken together, the results of this thesis show that the extent to which (tonal and segmental) differences between dialects interfere with processing may depend on external factors, such as phonetic similarity, language proficiency and age.
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