The role of tonal information during spoken-word recognition in Chinese: Evidence from a printed-word eye-tracking study

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the extent to which the lexical tone can affect spoken-word recognition in Chinese using a printed-word paradigm. Participants were presented with a visual display of four words-namely, a target word (e.g., (sic),xiang4xian4, "quadrant"), a tone-consistent phonological competitor (e.g., (sic), xiang4ce4, "photo album"), or a tone-inconsistent phonological competitor (e.g., ,xiang1cai4, "coriander"), and two unrelated distractors. Simultaneously, they were asked to listen to a spoken target word presented in isolation (Experiment1) or embedded in neutral/predictive sentence contexts (Experiment2), and then click on the target word on the screen. Results showed significant phonological competitor effects (i.e., the fixation proportion on the phonological competitor was higher than that on the distractors) under both tone conditions. Specifically, a larger phonological competitor effect was observed in the tone-consistent condition than in the tone-inconsistent condition when the spoken word was presented in isolation and the neutral sentence contexts. This finding suggests a partial role of lexical tone in constraining spoken-word recognition. However, when embedded in a predictive sentence context, the phonological competitor effect was only observed in the tone-consistent condition and absent in the tone-inconsistent condition. This result indicates that the predictive sentence context can strengthen the role of lexical tone

The role of lexical tone in spoken word recognition of Chinese

The present study used a direct priming task in order to investigate the nature and processing of tonal information in spoken word recognition of Chinese. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, prime-target pairs contrasted in terms of tonal and segmental overlap. Experiment 1 replicated the first experiment of C.-Y. Lee's (2007) study but with a significant modification that balanced tonal information in prime-target pairs. Forty-eight monosyllabic Mandarin target words were paired with four types of primes in which prime and target were identical (e.g., bo1- bo1), shared only segmental information (e.g., bo1 -bo2), shared only tonal information (e.g., bo1 -zhua1) or were unrelated (e.g., bo1 -man3). Experiment 2 extended the prime-target paradigm to include minimal segmental overlap in onset and in offset portion. Forty-eight monosyllabic Mandarin target words were paired with four types of primes in which prime and target were identical (e.g., bo1- bo1), shared tonal and only onset segmental information (e.g., bo1 -bin1), shared tonal and only offset segmental information (e.g., bo1 -po1) or were unrelated (e.g., bo1 -man3). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the facilitation effect was found when the prime-target pairs were identical or segmental structure overlapped compared to conditions where the prime-target pairs only overlapped in tone or were unrelated. Effects of similarity of tone across prime-target segmental pairs were also analyzed. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the facilitation effect was only found when the prime-target pairs were identical. Partial segmental overlap in conjunction with tone resulted in inhibition compared to an unrelated control. Together, these data indicate that segmental information can facilitate word recognition, with segmental information carrying more weight than tonal information in the processing of spoken Chinese

How Native Chinese Listeners and Second-Language Chinese Learners Process Tones in Word Recognition: An Eye-tracking Study

Chinese and English differ in the types of information they use to convey meaning in words: unlike English, Chinese uses lexical tones (i.e., pitch movement) to contrast word meanings (e.g., in Chinese, the word “ma” can mean mother, hemp, horse, or scold depending on its lexical tone). This difference between Chinese and English poses word recognition difficulties for English-speaking learners of Chinese in using lexical tones to recognize Chinese words. Existing research on L2 learners’ perception and processing of lexical tones has focused on whether native listeners of languages that do not have lexical tones can discriminate and identify lexical tones. To date, no study to our knowledge has examined how L2 learners use the fine-grained phonetic details of tonal information in the time course of spoken word recognition — that is, as the speech signal unfolds over time. In fact, little research has looked into the time course with which native listeners use the fine-grained phonetic details of tonal information in spoken word recognition. This doctoral dissertation examines how native Chinese listeners and highly proficient adult English-speaking learners of Chinese use tonal information in spoken word recognition as the speech signal unfolds in time. More specifically, this research uses the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to shed light on the precise time course with which native and non-native listeners use tonal information in online word recognition. The proposed research aims to investigate two potential differences between native listeners and highly proficient English-speaking L2 learners of Chinese in their use of tonal information as the speech signal unfolds: (i) their potentially different incremental use of the early pitch height before pitch contour information of the tone is available; (ii) their potentially different sensitivities to fine-grained within-category gradience of level and contour tones in the word recognition process. Experiment 1 investigates whether or not native and non-native listeners make similar use of early between-category pitch height (T1-T4 with similar early pitch height vs. T1-T2 with different pitch height) before pitch contour information is available. A visual-world eye-tracking experiment in Chinese was conducted with two groups of participants: 36 native Chinese listeners and 26 highly proficient English-speaking L2 learners of Chinese. The target was either T1 or T2 word in T1-T2 condition whereas the target was either T1 or T4 word in T1-T4 condition. The auditory stimuli were natural tonal tokens. The time-window analyses on fixations showed that early pitch height constrained both Chinese and English listeners’ lexical access. While Chinese listeners started using early pitch height in the time window in which pitch contour information was not available, English listeners started using early pitch height in the time windows in which pitch contour information had been available, and showed more tonal competition than Chinese listeners. The findings suggest that whether or not prosodic cues contribute to distinguishing among words in the L1, and how they do so, influence listeners’ use of these cues in spoken word recognition. Experiment 2 investigates whether native Chinese listeners and English-speaking L2 learners of Chinese differ in using the within-category gradience of level and contour tones to recognize spoken words. Another visual-world eye-tracking experiment in Chinese was conducted with the same participants. The target was a level tone (i.e., T1) and the competitor was a high-rising tone (i.e., T2), or vice versa. The auditory stimuli were manipulated such that the target tone was either canonical in the standard condition, acoustically more distant from the competitor in the distant condition, or acoustically closer to the competitor in the close condition. Growth curve analysis on fixations suggested that Chinese listeners showed a gradient pattern of lexical competition, with decreased competition in the distant condition and increased competition in the close condition than in the standard condition for the contour tone; English listeners, on the other hand, showed increased competition in both the distant and close conditions relative to the standard condition for the level tone. These findings suggest that Chinese listeners may show sensitivity to fine-grained tonal variability when this variability is along a dimension (i.e., pitch contour) that is meaningful for distinguishing tones whereas English listeners might show sensitivity to the fine-grained tonal variability along a dimension (i.e., pitch height) encoded in their L1 lexical representations. Moreover, native and non-native listeners, who potentially differ in the robustness of their representations of lexical tones, may adopt different strategies to deal with fined-grained tonal information to resolve the lexical competition. The findings of this doctoral dissertation make a contribution to the understanding of how tonal information modulates lexical activation in native and non-native Chinese listeners. This research also has pedagogical implications for Chinese language teaching

Production and perception of tones by Dutch learners of Mandarin

The function of pitch movements varies across languages. Tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, use pitch configurations to differentiate between word forms. For non-tone languages (such as Dutch and English), pitch information is mainly used at the post-lexical level, e.g., to signal sentential prominence or delimit prosodic constituents. Therefore, learning to use lexical tones is always difficult for non-tone second language learners of Mandarin who are not familiar with using pitch information in a lexically contrastive way. This thesis investigates various aspects of production and perception of tones by beginning and advanced Dutch learners of Mandarin. Through a series of four experiments, this thesis examines the developmental path of Dutch learners of Mandarin at the university level in their acquisition of fine-grained tonal coarticulation patterns, distribution of attention between segments and tones, phonological processing of tones and using tonal information in spoken word recognition. The mechanisms underlying the learners’ tone acquisition are discussed with reference to current theories and models of second language acquisition and spoken word recognition. China Scholarship Council Leiden University Centre for LinguisticsTheoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Phonological similarity effects in Cantonese word recognition

Two lexical decision experiments in Cantonese are described in which the recognition of spoken target words as a function of phonological similarity to a preceding prime is investigated. Phonological similaritv in first syllables produced inhibition, while similarity in second syllables led to facilitation. Differences between syllables in tonal and segmental structure had generally similar effects

What is in the neighborhood of a tonal syllable? Evidence from auditory lexical decision in Mandarin Chinese

Phonological neighborhood effects have been found in spoken word recognition, word production and phonetic variation (Gahl, Yao, & Johnson, 2012; Luce & Pisoni, 1998; Vitevitch, 2002). Overall, words from dense neighborhoods are harder to recognize but easier to produce. However, most previous studies have focused on English, while evidence suggests that these effects may not generalize cross-linguistically due to language-specific configurations of the lexicon (Michael S Vitevitch & Stamer, 2006, 2009). In the current study, we investigate the effects of phonological neighborhoods in Mandarin Chinese, which has a vastly different lexicon structure from that of English. Results from an auditory lexical decision experiment showed that phonological neighborhood density and neighbor frequency (defined by the one-phoneme/tone difference rule) are predictive of the speed and accuracy of lexical decision. Homophone density also has a facilitative effect on the accuracy of lexical decision. The implications of the current findings are discussed in the framework of the lexicon model proposed by Zhou & Marslen-Wilson (1994, 2009)

Acoustic Features and Perceptive Cues of Songs and Dialogues in Whistled Speech: Convergences with Sung Speech

Whistled speech is a little studied local use of language shaped by several cultures of the world either for distant dialogues or for rendering traditional songs. This practice consists of an emulation of the voice thanks to a simple modulated pitch. It is therefore the result of a transformation of the vocal signal that implies simplifications in the frequency domain. The whistlers adapt their productions to the way each language combines the qualities of height perceived simultaneously by the human ear in the complex frequency spectrum of the spoken or sung voice (pitch, timbre). As a consequence, this practice underlines key acoustic cues for the intelligibility of the concerned languages. The present study provides an analysis of the acoustic and phonetic features selected by whistled speech in several traditions either in purely oral whistles (Spanish, Turkish, Mazatec) or in whistles produced with an instrument like a leaf (Akha, Hmong). It underlines the convergences with the strategies of the singing voice to reach the audience or to render the phonetic information carried by the vowel (tone, identity) and some aesthetic effects like ornamentation

Context effects on second-language learning of tonal contrasts.

Studies of lexical tone  learning generally focus on monosyllabic contexts, while reports of phonetic learning benefits associated with input variability are based largely on experienced learners. This study trained inexperienced learners on Mandarin tonal contrasts to test two hypotheses regarding the influence of context and variability on tone  learning. The first hypothesis was that increased phonetic variability of tones in disyllabic contexts makes initial tone  learning more challenging in disyllabic than monosyllabic words. The second hypothesis was that the learnability of a given tone varies across contexts due to differences in tonal variability. Results of a word learning experiment supported both hypotheses: tones were acquired less successfully in disyllables than in monosyllables, and the relative difficulty of disyllables was closely related to contextual tonal variability. These results indicate limited relevance of monosyllable-based data on Mandarin learning for the disyllabic majority of the Mandarin lexicon. Furthermore, in the short term, variability can diminish learning; its effects are not necessarily beneficial but dependent on acquisition stage and other learner characteristics. These findings thus highlight the importance of considering contextual variability and the interaction between variability and type of learner in the design, interpretation, and application of research on phonetic learning