The effects of language dominance on the L1 and L2 tone production of Mandarin-Cantonese bilinguals.

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of language dominance on the cross-linguistic influence in the first and second languages (L1 and L2) of lexical tone production by Mandarin-Cantonese late bilinguals. Although the participants were unable to retain their L1 tonal system or to fully acquire the L2 tonal system after long-term exposure to their L2, certain correlations emerged between language dominance and tone production in L1 and L2. These findings add to the existing literature on language dominance and support the general assumption that bilinguals' two languages interfere with each other.