Perception and lexical representation of Mandarin tones by nonnative listeners

2020 ◽  
Vol 148 (4) ◽  
pp. 2812-2812
Author(s):  
Kuo-Chan Sun
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Nonnative Listeners ◽  
Mandarin Tones

Bengali geminates

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Kotzor ◽  
Allison Wetterlin ◽  
Aditi Lahiri
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Real Word ◽  
Behavioural Experiments ◽  
Phonological System

Bengali has a robust medial geminate/singleton contrast across oral stops and nasals in five places of articulation. This chapter presents a synchronic account of the phonological system involving the consonantal length contrast, which supports an asymmetric moraic representation of geminates. Based on these representational assumptions, two EEG and two behavioural experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of this geminate/singleton contrast by Bengali native speakers. The results reveal a processing asymmetry for the duration contrast: the processing of the duration contrast is indeed asymmetric: a geminate mispronunciation is accepted for a singleton real word, while the reverse is not the case. This provides evidence that the lexical representation of the duration contrast must be asymmetric and thus privative rather than equipollent.

Aging Effects on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Lexical Tones in Noise

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Yuxia Wang ◽  
Xiaohu Yang ◽  
Hongwei Ding ◽  
Can Xu ◽  
Chang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Perception ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Aging Effects ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Tone Recognition ◽  
Ratio Condition ◽  
Mandarin Tones ◽  
Mandarin Tone ◽  
General Tone

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the aging effects on the categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical Tones 1–4 and Tones 1–2 in noise. It also investigated whether listeners' categorical tone perception in noise correlated with their general tone identification of 20 natural vowel-plus-tone signals in noise. Method Twelve younger and 12 older listeners with normal hearing were recruited in both tone identification and discrimination tasks in a CP paradigm where fundamental frequency contours of target stimuli varied systematically from the flat tone (Tone 1) to the rising/falling tones (Tones 2/4). Both tasks were conducted in quiet and noise with signal-to-noise ratios set at −5 and −10 dB, respectively, and general tone identification of natural speech signals was also tested in noise conditions. Results Compared with younger listeners, older listeners had shallower identification slopes and smaller discrimination peakedness in Tones 1–2/4 perception in all listening conditions, except for Tones 1–4 perception in quiet where no group differences were found. Meanwhile, noise affected Tones 1–2/4 perception: The signal-to-noise ratio condition at −10 dB brought shallower slope in Tones 1–2/4 identification and less peakedness in Tones 1–4 discrimination for both listener groups. Older listeners' CP in noise, the identification slopes in particular, positively correlated with their general tone identification in noise, but such correlations were partially missing for younger listeners. Conclusions Both aging and the presence of speech-shaped noise significantly reduced the CP of Mandarin Tones 1–2/4. Listeners' Mandarin tone recognition may be related to their CP of Mandarin tones.

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