Chinese tone and intonation perceived by L1 and L2 listeners

Abstract

Pitch is used in Chinese both at the word level to differentiate between four (or more) lexical tones and at the sentence level. A functional view claims that if some phonetic dimension is exploited in one area of the grammar (including the phonology) it will not be used to the same extent in another part of the phonology. We addressed the issue by asking how well learners of Chinese as a second language (L2) perceive pitch variations at word and sentence-levels. We assume that if there is competition between these two uses of pitch, we should expect L2 speakers whose native language (L1) is a tone language to be more sensitive to lexical tones and less sensitive to sentence intonation than L2 speakers whose L1 is a non-tone language.Eighty-one Chinese-speaking (Beijing dialect) subjects participated in two laboratorycontrolled perception experiments, on lexical tone and sentence intonation (statement vs. question), in which we manipulated the intonation contour of an entire utterance as well as that of the final syllable. We recruited one group of L1 listeners (native Beijing speakers) and three groups of L2 listeners, i.e. two groups with a tone-language L1 (Nantong and Changsha dialect) and one group with non-tone language L1 (Uygur, an Altaic language).Results revealed that in perceiving tones and intonation in Beijing dialect, relative to L1 performance, L2 listeners with a non-tone-language L1 (Uygur) proved less sensitive to lexical tones but were at the same time more sensitive to intonation than L2 listeners with a tone-language L1. These results support the functional view, i.e., if some phonetic dimension is exploited in one area of the grammar, e.g. lexical tones, it will not be used to the same extent in another part of the phonology, e.g. sentence intonation.CHINESE TONE AND INTONATION PERCEIVED BY L1 AND L2 LISTENERS 3

Effects of linguistic experience on the perception of high-variability non-native tones

“…In addition to comparing tone perception by speakers of a tone language and a non-tone language, researchers have further explored whether speakers of a tone language have an advantage over non-tone language speakers in perceiving tonal contrasts in a different tone language, but the findings were mixed. While some studies reported that tone speakers outperformed non-tone speakers in non-native tone perception (Liang and van Heuven, 2007;Wayland and Guion, 2004), others found no significant performance difference between the two groups Hao, 2012;So and Best, 2010). Yet other researchers have found selective advantages of tone language experience in the perception of non-native tones (Lee et al, 1996;Qin and Jongman, 2015;Qin and Mok, 2011).…”

“…In a tone recognition task, speaker normalization is required when the stimuli presented are from multiple speakers (So and Best, 2010;Wayland and Guion, 2004) but not when all the stimuli come from a single speaker (used in most of the aforementioned studies); furthermore, when speaker normalization is indeed required, it may be facilitated by presenting the tone stimuli in context Hao, 2012;Liang and van Heuven, 2007) as opposed to presenting the tones in isolation (as in most of the aforementioned studies). To our knowledge, Lee et al (2009) is the only available study that systematically compares native tone listeners' and non-tone listeners' perception of tones produced by single vs multiple speakers and tones presented in isolation vs in context.…”

Online processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin: Evidence from ERPs

“…The other claims that the F0 difference between questions and statements is more pronounced towards the end of the sentences (Kratochvil, 1998;Liu and Xu, 2005;Xu, 2005;Peng et al, 2005). Different from the above acoustic studies, Liang and Van Heuven (2007) conducted intonation perception experiments with a seven-syllable-sentence containing merely high-level tone syllables. They manipulated both the overall pitch level of the sentence and the pitch level of the final tone.…”

Perception of intonation in Mandarin Chinese

“…Other perceptual experiments have also demonstrated that the mapping between the acoustic signal and the intonational categories is phonologized (Chen et al, 2004;Makarova, 2001). Liang and van Heuven (2007) compared L1 and L2 learners' perception of Chinese tone and intonation. They concluded that F 0 is primarily perceived at the lexical level for listeners of tone languages but at the sentence level for listeners of non-tone languages.…”