The role of linguistic experience in the hemispheric perception of Mandarin tone.

2009 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 2766-2766
Author(s):  
Shuang Lu ◽  
Vincent J. van Heuven ◽  
Ratree Wayland
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Mandarin Tone

scholarly journals The role of linguistic experience in the hemispheric processing of lexical tone

2004 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 449-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
YUE WANG ◽  
DAWN M. BEHNE ◽  
ALLARD JONGMAN ◽  
JOAN A. SERENO
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Hemispheric Lateralization ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Hemispheric Processing ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Hemisphere Dominance ◽  
Ear Advantage ◽  
Nonnative Listeners ◽  
Mandarin Tone

This study investigated hemispheric lateralization of Mandarin tone. Four groups of listeners were examined: native Mandarin listeners, English–Mandarin bilinguals, Norwegian listeners with experience with Norwegian tone, and American listeners with no tone experience. Tone pairs were dichotically presented and listeners identified which tone they heard in each ear. For the Mandarin listeners, 57% of the total errors occurred in the left ear, indicating a right-ear (left-hemisphere) advantage. The English–Mandarin bilinguals exhibited nativelike patterns, with 56% left-ear errors. However, no ear advantage was found for the Norwegian or American listeners (48 and 47% left-ear errors, respectively). Results indicate left-hemisphere dominance of Mandarin tone by native and proficient bilingual listeners, whereas nonnative listeners show no evidence of lateralization, regardless of their familiarity with lexical tone.

The role of creaky voice in Mandarin tone 2 and tone 3 perception

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Cao ◽  
Ratree Wayland ◽  
Edith Kaan
Keyword(s):  
Creaky Voice ◽  
Mandarin Tone

scholarly journals Selective attention to a talker's mouth in infancy: role of audiovisual temporal synchrony and linguistic experience

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. e12381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Hillairet de Boisferon ◽  
Amy H. Tift ◽  
Nicholas J. Minar ◽  
David J. Lewkowicz
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Temporal Synchrony

scholarly journals Semantic Imagination as Condition to our Linguistic Experience

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-378
Author(s):  
Nazareno Eduardo De Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Essential Feature ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Semantic Role ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Semantic Function ◽  
Sign Systems ◽  
Counterfactual Thought ◽  
Semiotic Perspective

The main purpose of this article is, from a semiotic perspective, arguing for the recognizing of a semantic role of the imagination as a necessary condition to our linguistic experience, regarded as an essential feature of the relations of our thought with the world through signification processes (and the sign systems they perform); processes centered in but not reducible to discourse. The text is divided into three parts. The first part presents the traditional position in philosophy and cognitive sciences that had barred until recent times the possibility to investigate the semantic function performed by imagination, mainly due to the anti-psychologist arguments on which it is based. After that, I situate my perspective inside of the recent research panorama in philosophy and cognitive science. The second part presents the semiotic framework on the relation between thought, language, and world, conceived through the concepts of signification processes and sense-conditions. Within this framework, I introduce the concept of linguistic experience, characterizing semantic imagination as one of its sense-conditions. In the third part, several pieces of evidence for corroborating the semantic function of imagination are discussed. These pieces come from the fields of phenomena denoted as diagrammatic thought and counterfactual thought. Diagrammatic thought, briefly discussed, points out the semantic work of imagination in the semi-discursive sign systems constructed in mathematics, logic, and natural science. After defending a widening of the concept of counterfactual thought, and its intrinsic relation with semantic imagination, the role of semantic imagination is briefly discussed in some types of counterfactual thought found in our conceptions of modal concepts, in thought experiments, in apagogical arguments, and in the creative discursive devices.

No perceptual reorganization for Limburgian tones? A cross-linguistic investigation with 6- to 12-month-old infants

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 290-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFANIE RAMACHERS ◽  
SUSANNE BROUWER ◽  
PAULA FIKKERT
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Year ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Tone Languages ◽  
First Year Of Life ◽  
Visual Habituation ◽  
Degree Of Similarity

AbstractDespite the fact that many of the world's languages use lexical tone, the majority of language acquisition studies has focused on non-tone languages. Research on tone languages has typically investigated well-known tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. The current study looked at a Limburgian dialect of Dutch that uses lexical pitch differences, albeit in a rather restricted way. Using a visual habituation paradigm, 6- to 12-month-old Limburgian and Dutch infants were tested for their ability to discriminate Limburgian tones. The results showed that both Limburgian and Dutch infants discriminate the Limburgian tones throughout their first year of life. The role of linguistic experience, acoustic salience, and the degree of similarity to the native prosodic system are discussed.

Non-native Japanese learners’ perception of consonant length in Japanese and Italian

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Felicity Cox ◽  
John Hajek ◽  
Yukari Hirata
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Identification Task ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Japanese Learners

Learners of a foreign language (FL) typically have to learn to process sounds that do not exist in their first language (L1). As this is known to be difficult for adults, in particular, it is important for FL pedagogy to be informed by phonetic research. This study examined the role of FL learners’ previous linguistic experience in the processing of a contrast absent in the L1. The FLs under investigation are Japanese and Italian, which both use contrastive consonant length. Two groups of non-native Japanese (NNJ) learners – L1 Australian English (OZ) and L1 Korean – participated in the consonant length identification task. Neither OZ nor Korean has an underlying consonant length contrast, but Korean has non-contrastive lengthening of tense obstruents with corresponding shorter preceding vowels, which may be beneficial in perceiving consonant length in an FL. We have taken a novel, two-stage approach. First, we compared the perception of Japanese long/geminate and short/singleton consonants by the two groups of NNJ learners. Second, we investigated whether FL Japanese learning by the two groups transfers to the processing of consonant length in an unknown language, Italian. Native speakers of Japanese (NJ) and Italian (NI) were included as controls. They were familiar with contrastive consonant length in their L1, but were naïve to the other language. The NJ and NI groups accurately identified the consonant length category in their L1 but were slightly less accurate in the unknown language. The two NNJ groups were generally accurate (> 80%) in perceiving consonant length not only in Japanese, but also in Italian. However, the direction of NNJ learners’ misperception (i.e. singleton as geminate or geminate as singleton) varied, suggesting that some learners, according to their L1, may categorize length in Japanese and Italian differently rather than uniformly applying the concept of [±long].

Testing the role of phonetic knowledge in Mandarin tone sandhi

Phonology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Yuwen Lai
Keyword(s):  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Disyllabic Words ◽  
Mandarin Speakers ◽  
Mandarin Tone ◽  
Novel Words

AbstractPhonological patterns often have phonetic bases. But whether phonetic substance should be encoded in synchronic phonological grammar is controversial. We aim to test the synchronic relevance of phonetics by investigating native Mandarin speakers' applications of two exceptionless tone sandhi processes to novel words: the contour reduction 213→21/—T (T≠213), which has a clear phonetic motivation, and the perceptually neutralising 213→35/—213, whose phonetic motivation is less clear. In two experiments, Mandarin subjects were asked to produce two individual monosyllables together as two different types of novel disyllabic words. Results show that speakers apply the 213→21 sandhi with greater accuracy than the 213→35 sandhi in novel words, indicating a synchronic bias against the phonetically less motivated pattern. We also show that lexical frequency is relevant to the application of the sandhis to novel words, but cannot account alone for the low sandhi accuracy of 213→35.

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