Identification and discrimination of Mandarin Chinese tones by Mandarin Chinese vs. French listeners

Abstract

Previous work has not yielded clear conclusions about the categorical nature of perception of tone contrasts by native listeners of tone languages. We reopen this issue in a cross-linguistic study comparing Taiwan Mandarin and French listeners. We tested these listeners on three tone continua derived from natural Mandarin utterances within carrier sentences, created via a state-of-the-art pitch-scaling technique in which within-continuum interpolation was applied to both f 0 and intensity contours. Classic assessments of categorization and discrimination of each tone continuum were conducted with both groups of listeners. In Experiment 1, Taiwanese listeners identified the tone of target syllables within carrier sentence context and discriminated tones of single syllables. In Experiment 2, both French and Taiwanese listeners completed an AXB identification task on single syllables. Finally, French listeners were run on an AXB discrimination task in Experiment 3. Results indicated that Taiwanese listeners' perception of tones is quasi-categorical whereas French listeners' is psychophysically based. French listeners nevertheless show substantial sensitivity to tone contour differences, though to a lesser extent than Taiwanese listeners. Thus, the findings suggest that despite the lack of lexical tone contrasts in the French language, French listeners are not absolutely ''deaf'' to tonal variations. They simply fail to perceive tones along the lines of a welldefined and finite set of linguistic categories. r

Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language

“…Yet comparable levels of accuracy do not equal same way of processing, nor do they imply equal sensitivity to lexical tones. Several studies have shown that lexical tones are processed in different ways by native and non-native listeners (Francis et al, 2003;Hallé et al, 2004). In light of these previous findings, presumably, in our tasks, Chinese listeners perceived their native lexical tones as phonological contrasts, whereas Dutch listeners paid attention to the acoustical differences.…”

“…Although T3 tends to have a longer duration compared to the other lexical tones (Xu, 1997), duration is not the primary cue for lexical tone perception. For example, although discrimination based on duration was not directly examined, the stimuli in Hallé et al (2004) and Shen and Lin (1991) differed with about 100 ms, but in both studies, the native listeners reached ceiling accuracy for identifying T2 and T3. Our stimuli were longer than the average syllable duration in running speech (Chen, Wang, & Lee, 2000), which ensured the naturalness of both T2 and T3.…”

“…Such assumption, however, neglects the important fact that lexical tones do not have the same function for tone and non-tone speakers. The absence of lexical tones makes non-tone language listeners perceive them psycho-acoustically rather than phonologically, whereas for tone language speakers, lexical tones are phonological categories rather than pure acoustical pitch variations (Francis, Ciocca, & Ng, 2003;Hallé, Chang, & Best, 2004;Xu, Gandour, & Francis, 2006). Music perception, on the other hand, calls for accurate perception of discrete pitches as small as one semitone, regardless of language background (McDermott & Oxenham, 2008;Trainor & Hannon, 2013).…”

Prosodic challenges faced by English speakers reading Mandarin

“…Speakers with a non-tone language background do not perceive tones categorically and are therefore unable to align tones with associated syllables or words (Hallé et al 2004;Repp & Lin 1990;Fox & Qi 1990). Also, segmental variations related to articulatory constraints may cause the tonal expressions of non-tone speakers to deviate from ideal realizations, including carryover tonal variations, F0 peak delays, and long transition of F0 at syllable boundaries (Xu 1999;Xu & Wang 2001).…”

Processing of Acoustic and Phonological Information of Lexical Tones in Mandarin Chinese Revealed by Mismatch Negativity

“…This acrosscategory vs. within-category perception difference has been extensively studied in previous work with segmental phonemes, such as consonants and vowels (e.g., with VOT characteristics), but are less well understood in studies with suprasegmental features such as tones. It has been found recently, however, that the perception of lexical tones shows categorical perception just as do phonemes: native speakers of tonal languages are more sensitive to acrosscategory tonal variations than within-category variations (see Francis et al, 2003;Hallé et al, 2004;Xu et al, 2006;Xi et al, 2010). Xi et al (2010) used MMN to examine categorical perception of tones in Chinese.…”