Effect of tonal native language on voice fundamental frequency responses to pitch feedback perturbations during sustained vocalizations

Abstract

The purpose of this cross-language study was to examine whether the online control of voice fundamental frequency (F 0 ) during vowel phonation is influenced by language experience. Native speakers of Cantonese and Mandarin, both tonal languages spoken in China, participated in the experiments. Subjects were asked to vocalize a vowel sound /u/ at their comfortable habitual F 0 , during which their voice pitch was unexpectedly shifted (650, 6100, 6200, or 6500 cents, 200 ms duration) and fed back instantaneously to them over headphones. The results showed that Cantonese speakers produced significantly smaller responses than Mandarin speakers when the stimulus magnitude varied from 200 to 500 cents. Further, response magnitudes decreased along with the increase in stimulus magnitude in Cantonese speakers, which was not observed in Mandarin speakers. These findings suggest that online control of voice F 0 during vocalization is sensitive to language experience. Further, systematic modulations of vocal responses across stimulus magnitude were observed in Cantonese speakers but not in Mandarin speakers, which indicates that this highly automatic feedback mechanism is sensitive to the specific tonal system of each language.

Dynamics of Vocalization-Induced Modulation of Auditory Cortical Activity at Mid-utterance

“…Mandarin-native speakers were recruited in the present study, while English-native speakers were involved in most of previous research [17], [21], [25], [28]. Indeed, there is evidence that behavioral and neurophysiological responses to mid-utterance PSS are shaped by language experience [36], [38]. However, it is very unlikely that the vocalization-listening difference of ERPs would be specific to participants’ language experience.…”

Audio–vocal responses of vocal fundamental frequency and formant during sustained vowel vocalizations in different noises

“…According to the pitch shift study, online control of voice F0 during vocalization is sensitive to language experience of the tonal language (Liu et al, 2010). However, the tonal features in the running speech of such language system, as well as the pitch shift stimuli, usually last for hundreds of ms.…”

Temporal control and compensation for perturbed voicing feedback

“…Language specific compensatory production has been reported in the vocalization (e.g., Liu et al, 2010;Chen et al, 2010). One example of linguistic influence on compensatory speech production in vowel formant paradigm is that Mitsuya et al (2013) had French talkers and English talkers produce a phonologically identical vowel /e/ while its F2 was lowered.…”