Processing of acoustic and phonological information of lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese revealed by mismatch negativity

Abstract

The accurate perception of lexical tones in tonal languages involves the processing of both acoustic information and phonological information carried by the tonal signal. In this study we evaluated the relative role of the two types of information in native Chinese speaker’s processing of tones at a preattentive stage with event-related potentials (ERPs), particularly the mismatch negativity (MNN). Specifically, we distinguished the acoustic from the phonological information by manipulating phonological category and acoustic interval of the stimulus materials. We found a significant main effect of phonological category for the peak latency of MMN, but a main effect of both phonological category and acoustic interval for the mean amplitude of MMN. The results indicated that the two types of information, acoustic and phonological, play different roles in the processing of Chinese lexical tones: acoustic information only impacts the extent of tonal processing, while phonological information affects both the extent and the time course of tonal processing. Implications of these findings are discussed in light of neurocognitive processes of phonological processing.

Effects of native language experience on Mandarin lexical tone processing in proficient second language learners

“…This paradigm could also allow the direct comparison and dissociation of acoustic and phonological information from tonal stimuli by using the same syllable (e.g., /pa/ with different tonal variations in Xi et al, ). It has also been proved effective in previous studies (e.g., Xi et al, ; L. Zhang et al, ; K. Yu et al, ).…”

“…These were similar to the findings in Xi et al (), which used the same tonal continuum to explore native speakers’ categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones. Many other studies have also used this tonal continuum to detect native speakers’ categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones successfully (Wang et al, ; Xi et al, ; K. Yu et al, ; L. Zhang et al, , ).…”

“…Furthermore, the pitch features of Tone 3 are complex, and even native speakers could perform poorly when identifying them (e.g., A. Chen, Liu, & Kager, ; Huang & Johnson, ). Moreover, this tonal continuum has been used successfully to detect native speakers’ categorical perception of Mandarin lexical tones in many previous studies (Wang, Wang, Fan, Huang, & Zhang, ; Xi et al, ; K. Yu et al, ; L. Zhang et al, , ). Given the well‐established protocol and findings, we chose the same synthetic tonal continuum from Mandarin Tone 2 to Tone 4 as the test materials.…”

“…However, if F0 interval and/or tonal category have similar effects on the MMN responses between the two groups of L2 learners, the L1 experience would not affect the processing of phonological and/or acoustic information in L2 lexical tones. Moreover, by comparing these L2 patterns with native speakers from previous studies (Xi et al, ; K. Yu et al, , ), we could further evaluate which group of L2 learners would perform more nativelike in processing these two types of information. If L2 learners with tonal L1 show more nativelike performance (similar effects of tonal category and/or F0 interval on MMN responses as native speakers), then native tonal experience would facilitate learning the phonological and/or acoustic information in L2 lexical tones.…”

Neurophysiological and Behavioral Responses of Mandarin Lexical Tone Processing

“…For example, the amplitude of MMN is larger for between- than within-category F0 differences in native Mandarin listeners (Xi et al, 2010; Yu et al, 2014). Ren and colleagues found that MMN was larger when pitch was used phonetically than when it served a prosodic (intonation) function (Ren et al, 2009).…”