Neural Basis of First and Second Language Processing of Sentence-Level Linguistic Prosody

Abstract: A fundamental question in multilingualism is whether the neural substrates are shared or segregated for the two or more languages spoken by polyglots. This study employs functional MRI to investigate the neural substrates underlying the perception of two sentence-level prosodic phenomena that occur in both Mandarin Chinese (L1) and English (L2): sentence focus (sentence-initial vs.-final position of contrastive stress) and sentence type (declarative vs. interrogative modality). Late-onset, medium proficiency Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to selectively attend to either sentence focus or sentence type in paired three-word sentences in both L1 and L2 and make speeded-response discrim-ination judgments. L1 and L2 elicited highly overlapping activations in frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. Furthermore, region of interest analyses revealed that for both languages the sentence focus task elicited a leftward asymmetry in the supramarginal gyrus; both tasks elicited a rightward asymmetry in the mid-portion of the middle frontal gyrus. A direct comparison between L1 and L2 did not show any difference in brain activation in the sentence type task. In the sentence focus task, however, greater activation for L2 than L1 occurred in the bilateral anterior insula and superior frontal sulcus. The sentence focus task also elicited a leftward asymmetry in the posterior middle temporal gyrus for L1 only. Differential activation patterns are attributed primarily to disparities between L1 and L2 in the phoneti