Many aspects of a new language, including grammar rules, can be acquired and accessed within minutes. In the present study, we investigate how initial learners respond when the rules of a novel language are not adhered to. Through spoken word-picture association-learning, tonal and non-tonal speakers were taught artificial words. Along with lexicosemantic content expressed by consonants, the words contained grammatical properties embedded in vowels and tones. Pictures that were mismatched with any of the words’ phonological cues elicited an N400 in tonal learners. Non-tonal learners only produced an N400 when the mismatch was based on a word's vowel or consonants, not the tone. The emergence of the N400 might indicate that error processing in L2 learners (unlike canonical processing) does not initially differentiate between grammar and semantics. Importantly, only errors based on familiar phonological cues evoked a mismatch-related response, highlighting the importance of phonological transfer in initial second language acquisition.

中文翻译：

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新手学习者的语音迁移效应：只有当语言听起来很熟悉时，学习者的大脑才会检测到语法错误

一门新语言的许多方面，包括语法规则，都可以在几分钟内获得和访问。在本研究中，我们调查了在不遵守新语言规则时初始学习者的反应。通过口语单词-图片关联学习，有声调和无声调的说话者被教授人造词。除了辅音表达的词汇语义内容外，这些单词还包含嵌入元音和声调的语法特性。与任何单词的语音提示不匹配的图片会在声调学习者中引发 N400。当不匹配是基于单词的元音或辅音而不是声调时，非声调学习者只会产生 N400。N400 的出现可能表明 L2 学习者的错误处理（与规范处理不同）最初并没有区分语法和语义。重要的是，只有基于熟悉的语音提示的错误才会引起与不匹配相关的反应，突出了语音转移在最初的第二语言习得中的重要性。