Multi-level processing of phonetic variants in speech production and visual word processing: evidence from Mandarin lexical tones

Abstract

Two picture-word interference experiments provide new evidence on the nature of phonological processing in speech production and visual word processing. In both experiments, responses were significantly faster either when distractor and target matched in tone category, but had different overt realisations (toneme condition) or when target and distractor matched in overt realisation, but mismatched in tone category (contour condition). Tone 3 sandhi is an allophone of Beijing Mandarin Tone 3 (T3). Its contour is similar to another tone, Tone 2. In Experiment 1, sandhi picture naming was faster with contour (Tone 2) and toneme (low Tone 3) distractors, compared to control distractors. This indicates both category and context-specific representations are activated in sandhi word production. In Experiment 2, both contour (Tone 2) and toneme (low Tone 3) picture naming was facilitated by visually presented sandhi distractors, compared to controls, evidence that category and context-specific instantiated representations are automatically activated during processing of visually presented words. Combined, the results point to multi-level processing of phonology, whether words are overtly produced or processed visually. Interestingly, there were differences in the time course of effects.

Cross-category phonological effects on ERP amplitude demonstrate context-specific processing during reading aloud

“…In Beijing Mandarin, Tone 3 (T3) has at least two variants. T3 usually has a low contour, but preceding another T3 syllable, it is realised with a rising contour (sandhi T3).Importantly for the present study, the contour of sandhi T3 is very similar to another tone, Tone 2.A previous study (Nixon, Chen & Schiller, 2015) showed that production and visual processing of Mandarin tonal variants involves multi-level phonological processing, where there is activation of both the tonal contour and the tone category. The present study investigates whether the context provided by the following character in briefly presented masked primes affects processing of tone during reading aloud.…”

Dynamic effect of tonal similarity in bilingual auditory lexical processing

“…It is widely accepted that lexical tones function as abstract lexical frames and prosodic cues in the mental representation of words (Chen, Chen, & Dell, 2002;Ye & Connine, 1999), similarly to lexical stresses (Cutler & Van Donselaar, 2001;Cutler, 1986;Jongenburger, 1996;Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999;Van Heuven, 1988), and that tonal minimal pairs have distinct representations in lexical access (Chen, Shen, & Schiller, 2011;Malins & Joanisse, 2010Nixon, Chen, & Schiller, 2014;Wu, Chen, Van Heuven, & Schiller, 2014). Bilinguals of two tonal languages access tonal information differently than those who use only one (Wiener & Ito, 2015).…”

The time course of morphological processing during spoken word recognition in Chinese

“…Chinese compounds also contain a number of prosodic information, such as lexical tones and tone sandhi. Previous studies have shown that both tone category and tonal contour are activated during speech production (Nixon, Chen, & Schiller, 2015). During spoken word recognition, listeners may use the prosodic information to select a morpheme correctly, thereby facilitating early lexical decomposition.…”