Phonological categories are often differentiated by multiple phonetic cues. This paper reports a production and perception study of a laryngeal contrast in Shanghai Wu that is not only cued in multiple dimensions, but also cued differently on different manners (stops, fricatives, sonorants) and in different positions (non-sandhi, sandhi). Acoustic results showed that, although this contrast has been described as phonatory in earlier literature, its primary cue is in tone in the non-sandhi context, with vowel phonation and consonant properties appearing selectively for specific manners of articulation. In the sandhi context where the tonal distinction is neutralized, these other cues may remain depending on the manner of articulation. Sonorants, in both contexts, embody the weakest cues. The perception results were largely consistent with the aggregate acoustic results, indicating that speakers adjust the perceptual weights of individual cues for a contrast according to manner and context. These findings support the position that phonological contrasts are formed by the integration of multiple cues in a language-specific, context-specific fashion and should be represented as such.

This study investigated the use of segmental and suprasegmental cues to lexical stress in word recognition by Mandarin‐speaking English learners, Korean‐speaking English learners, and native English listeners. Unlike English and Mandarin, Korean does not have lexical stress. Participants completed a visual‐world eye‐tracking experiment that examined whether listeners’ word recognition is constrained by suprasegmental cues to stress alone or by a combination of segmental and suprasegmental cues. Results showed that English listeners used both suprasegmental cues alone and segmental and suprasegmental cues together to recognize English words, with the effect of stress being greater for combined cues. Conversely, Mandarin listeners used stress in lexical access only when stress was signaled by suprasegmental cues alone, and Korean listeners did so only when stress was signaled by segmental and suprasegmental cues together. These results highlight the importance of a cue‐based approach to the study of stress in word recognition. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible via the IRIS Repository at https://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

The primary goal of this dissertation is to understand the variation patterns in suprasegmental processes and what factors influence the patterns. To answer the questions, we investigated the variation patterns of tone sandhi in the Shanghai and Wuxi Wu dialects of Chinese.Shanghai disyllables and trisyllables have been documented to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal extension and tonal reduction. Some items can only undergo tonal extension, some items can only undergo tonal reduction, and some can variably undergo either type of sandhi. Previous works have indicated that the syntactic structure, semantic transparency, and lexical frequency of the items all play a role in the sandhi application.Additionally, the morpheme length of trisyllabic items (1+2, 2+1) is also expected to affect their sandhi application.A variant forms' goodness rating experiment, together with a lexical frequency rating experiment and a semantic transparency rating experiment, showed that syntactic structure has a primary effect on sandhi application in general. It overrides the effect of semantic transparency, especially in modifier-noun items. The nature of the lexical frequency effect in Shanghai is related to the syntactic structure of the lexical item. Morpheme length effect is not found.Wuxi disyllables and trisyllables also have been observed to have two different sandhi patterns: tonal substitution and no sandhi. Some items can only apply tonal substitution, and some can apply either form variably. Syntactic structure and semantic transparency have been iv reported to affect Wuxi sandhi application, and morpheme length is also expected to have an effect in trisyllabic sandhi application.The three rating experiments conducted in Wuxi found that due to the lexical listedness of the opaque substitution pattern, frequency influences both modifier-noun and verb-noun positively, although modifier-noun prefers tonal substitution form more. Semantic transparency effect is only apparent for verb-noun disyllables. Moreover, morpheme length also distinguishes sandhi application between 1+2 and 2+1 modifier-noun items.In all, by using quantitative rating experiments, the present study shows that tone sandhi variation is regulated by both grammatical factors, such as syntactic structure, morpheme length, phonological opacity, and nongrammatical factors, such as lexical frequency.v

Tone sandhi in Wuxi Chinese involves “pattern substitution,” whereby the base tone on the first syllable is first substituted by another tone, then spread to the sandhi domain. We conducted a wug test to investigate native Wuxi speakers’ tacit knowledge of tone sandhi and found that the substituion aspect of the sandhi is not fully productive, but the extension aspect is, and sandhi productivity is influenced by the phonetic similarity between base and sandhi tones. These results are discussed in the context of how phonological opacity, phonetic naturalness, and lexical frequency influence phonological learning, and a grammatical learning model that can predict Wuxi speakers’ experimental behavior is proposed.

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