Information for Mandarin Tones in the Amplitude Contour and in Brief Segments

Abstract

While the tones of Mandarin are conveyed mainly by the F₀ contour, they also differ consistently in duration and in amplitude contour. The contribution of these factors was examined by using signal-correlated noise stimuli, in which natural speech is manipulated so that it has no F₀ or formant structure but retains its original amplitude contour and duration. Tones 2, 3 and 4 were perceptible from just the amplitude contour, even when duration was not also a cue. In two further experiments, the location of the critical information for the tones during the course of the syllable was examined by extracting small segments from each part of the original syllable. Tones 2 and 3 were often confused with each other, and segments which did not have much F₀ change were most often heard as Tonel. There were, though, also cases in which a low, unchanging pitch was heard as Tone 3, indicating a partial effect of register even in Mandarin. F₀ was positively correlated with amplitude, even when both were computed on a pitch period basis. Taken together, the results show that Mandarin tones are realized in more than just the F₀ pattern, that amplitude contours can be used by listeners as cues for tone identification, and that not every portion of the F₀ pattern unambiguously indicates the original tone.

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

“…By testing both "difficult" and "easy" contrasts together, we had the chance to examine whether the two groups would differ in the discrimination of lexical tones, and if so, whether such differences were specific to the difficult or easy tones. Second, it has been argued that T2 and T3 share a similar pitch register, which is lower than T1 and T4 (Whalen & Xu, 1992). Our manipulation ensured that the natural register of the lexical tones was not distorted, and at the same time pitch contour was the only cue for discrimination.…”

Predicting tonal realizations in one Chinese dialect from another

“…However, human perception is more complex. On the one hand, different parts of pitch contours contribute differently to speech perception (Whalen and Xu, 1992). On the other hand, tonal perception is incremental (Shen et al, 2013).…”

Cognitive basis of individual differences in speech perception, production and representations: The role of domain general attentional switching

“…To address the above issues, Ou and Law (2016) subsequently conducted a more detailed examination of the differences in perception and production of T2/T5 between the [+Per+Pro] and [+Per-Pro] groups from Ou et al (2015), using ERPs obtained in a passive oddball paradigm for perception and acoustic measurements for production. The ERP measures included (1) an early component reflecting sensitivity to the rise time of sound amplitude envelope (Carpenter & Shahin, 2013;Thomson, Goswami, & Baldeweg, 2009), which has been reported to contribute to tone recognition (Fu & Zeng, 2000;Whalen & Xu, 1992;Zhou, 2012); (2) the mismatch negativity (MMN, see Näätänen, Paavilainen, Rinne, & Alho, 2007 for a review) indicating auditory discrimination sensitivity to the primary acoustic dimension of tone contrasts, i.e., pitch contour/height (Gandour, 1983;Khouw & Ciocca, 2007); and (3) P3a indexing involuntary attentional switching (Polich, 2003). For production, the differentiations between T2 and T5 in terms of pitch offset and amplitude rise time were measured acoustically.…”