The interaction of lexical tone, intonation and semantic context in on-line spoken word recognition: An ERP study on Cantonese Chinese

Kung, Carmen; Chwilla, Dorothee J.; Schriefers, Herbert

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.11.020

Cited by 20 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 33 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…By using the semantically neutral carrier, intonation information was successfully elicited. On the other hand, potential confound of semantic context with sentence prosody was excluded (Kung et al, 2014).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Low tones (21,23,22) (tone values in 5-point scale notation, each tone is described by the initial and the end point of the pitch level) were misperceived as the mid-rising tone (25) at the final positions of questions (Fok-Chan, 1974;Kung et al, 2014;Ma et al, 2011). This is probably because with a rising tail superimposed on all tone contours by question intonation (Ma et al, 2006), the F0 contour of the low tones in questions resembles that of a mid-rising tone in questions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This correspondence of the online MMN results with the offline behavioral results validates the initial ERP evidence of the interaction of tone and intonation in Mandarin. In addition to Mandarin, ERP evidence of online interplay of tone and intonation is also revealed in Cantonese (Kung et al, 2014). In this study, Cantonese participants were asked to perform a lexical-identification task, i.e., choosing the right word they heard from six Cantonese words on the screen in the form of Chinese characters, and the six words were tonal sextuplets of the critical word.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The two representations are a lexical representation with a low tone on the one hand and a lexical representation with a high rising tone on the other. Special attention should be paid to the fact that Kung et al (2014) found a P600 effect in the semantically neutral sentence context. In their subsequent study, when introducing a highly constraining semantic context to the target words, the P600 disappeared, suggesting that semantic context plays a role in resolving the online conflict between intonation and tone.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, we are interested in whether the processing of tone and intonation at the attentive stage differs from that at the pre-attentive stage. Third, the ERP study on Cantonese (Kung et al, 2014) extended the online processing of tone and intonation to a broader sentence domain. However, this study employed a lexical identification task rather than a pitch identification task per se.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

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

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tEvent-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the online processing of tone and intonation in Mandarin at the attentive stage. We examined the behavioral and electrophysiological responses of native Mandarin listeners to Mandarin sentences, which contrast in final tones (rising Tone2 or falling Tone4) and intonations (Question or Statement). A clear P300 effect was observed for question-statement contrast in sentences ending with Tone4, but no ERP effect was found for question-statement contrast in sentences ending with Tone2. Our results provide ERP evidence for the interaction of tone and intonation in Mandarin, confirming the findings with behavioral metalinguistic data that native Mandarin listeners can distinguish between question intonation and statement intonation when the intonation is associated with a final Tone4, but fail to do so when the intonation is associated with a final Tone2. Our study extended the understanding of online processing of tone and intonation (1) from the pre-attentive stage to the attentive stage and (2) within a larger domain (i.e. multi-word utterances) than a single word utterance.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Neural correlates of intonation and lexical tone in tonal and non‐tonal language speakers

Chien

Friederici

Hartwigsen

et al. 2020

Human Brain Mapping

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Intonation, the modulation of pitch in speech, is a crucial aspect of language that is processed in right‐hemispheric regions, beyond the classical left‐hemispheric language system. Whether or not this notion generalises across languages remains, however, unclear. Particularly, tonal languages are an interesting test case because of the dual linguistic function of pitch that conveys lexical meaning in form of tone, in addition to intonation. To date, only few studies have explored how intonation is processed in tonal languages, how this compares to tone and between tonal and non‐tonal language speakers. The present fMRI study addressed these questions by testing Mandarin and German speakers with Mandarin material. Both groups categorised mono‐syllabic Mandarin words in terms of intonation, tone, and voice gender. Systematic comparisons of brain activity of the two groups between the three tasks showed large cross‐linguistic commonalities in the neural processing of intonation in left fronto‐parietal, right frontal, and bilateral cingulo‐opercular regions. These areas are associated with general phonological, specific prosodic, and controlled categorical decision‐making processes, respectively. Tone processing overlapped with intonation processing in left fronto‐parietal areas, in both groups, but evoked additional activity in bilateral temporo‐parietal semantic regions and subcortical areas in Mandarin speakers only. Together, these findings confirm cross‐linguistic commonalities in the neural implementation of intonation processing but dissociations for semantic processing of tone only in tonal language speakers.

show abstract