The effects of native prosodic system and segmental context on Cantonese tone perception by Mandarin and Japanese listeners

Abstract

This study explores the effects of native prosodic system and segmental context on the perception of Cantonese tones by Mandarin and Japanese listeners. In Experiment 1, 13 Mandarin and 13 Japanese subjects took part in a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination test of Cantonese tones in different segmental contexts (familiar vs unfamiliar). In Experiment 2, 20 Mandarin listeners participated in a perceptual assimilation task that examined the cross-language perceptual similarity between Mandarin and Cantonese tones. Results showed that Mandarin listeners were comparable to Japanese counterparts in discriminability, but the former attended more to pitch contour differences while the latter were more sensitive to pitch height. Moreover, the effect of segmental context was significant exclusively in the Mandarin group, whereas the Japanese group performed stably across syllables in discriminating Cantonese tones. It seemed that unfamiliar context rendered lower perceptual similarity, which further hindered corresponding discrimination by the Mandarin group. In addition, segmental effects were mainly observed in the assimilation patterns of category goodness or uncategorized-categorized. These findings suggested that non-native tone perception could be modulated by listeners' native prosodic structures in a finer way.

The combined effects of L1-specific and extralinguistic factors on individual performance in a tone categorization and word identification task by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 speakers

“…This notion of categorical assimilation is rooted in models of L2 speech learning such as the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1995; Best and Tyler, 2007) that propose that the ease with which non-native sounds are learned depends on the relative similarity between L1 and L2 sounds. For example, L1 speakers of Mandarin, which only has one high-level tone, appear to struggle with discriminating Cantonese mid-level and low-level tones (Qin and Jongman, 2016; Zhu et al, 2021). It has been suggested that this is because Mandarin listeners tend to assimilate Cantonese level tones to the single Mandarin level tone, making them therefore relatively difficult to perceive accurately (Qin and Jongman, 2016, p. 334; Zhu et al, 2021, p. 4224).…”

“…For example, L1 speakers of Mandarin, which only has one high-level tone, appear to struggle with discriminating Cantonese mid-level and low-level tones (Qin and Jongman, 2016; Zhu et al, 2021). It has been suggested that this is because Mandarin listeners tend to assimilate Cantonese level tones to the single Mandarin level tone, making them therefore relatively difficult to perceive accurately (Qin and Jongman, 2016, p. 334; Zhu et al, 2021, p. 4224).…”

Phonetic and Phono-Lexical Accuracy of Non-Native Tone Production by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 Speakers

“…In phonological-categorical terms too, the rising and falling tones may be relatively easy for Mandarin speakers because these could assimilate in a one-to-one fashion to the Mandarin rise and fall categories. By contrast, the mid-level and low-level tones may be relatively difficult to process because these could assimilate in a many-to-one fashion to the Mandarin high-level or potentially the low-dipping tone (Qin & Jongman, 2016, p. 334; Zhu et al, 2021, p. 4224). As to the phonological similarity with English intonational tone types, the rising and falling tones resemble canonical rising (low-high) and falling (high-low) intonational tone types in Standard Southern British English (SSBE).…”

“…This notion of categorical assimilation is rooted in theoretical models such as the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) that propose that the ease with which non-native sounds are learned depends on the relative similarity between L1 and L2 sounds (Best, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007). For instance, Mandarin-L1 speakers appear to struggle with the discrimination of Cantonese mid-level and low-level tones because they may assimilate Cantonese level tone categories to the Mandarin level tone in a two-to-one fashion (Qin & Jongman, 2016, p. 334; Zhu et al, 2021, p. 4224). Although speakers of English and other non-tonal languages may also assimilate non-native tones to intonational categories, it appears that the effect of such assimilation on L2 tone perception is relatively weak (Reid et al, 2015; So & Best, 2010), arguably because intonational categories have a “weaker (less categorical) mental representation” than lexical tone categories (Francis et al, 2008, p. 269).…”

The more the better? Effects of L1 tonal density and typology on the perception of non-native tones

“…Furthermore, L1 tonal typology has also been shown to affect listeners’ perceptual bias towards different acoustic cues in the perception of tones [ 2 , 18 , 19 ]. It was found that Mandarin and Cantonese listeners paid more attention to the pitch contour, while Japanese listeners attended more to the pitch height [ 19 ]. To the best of our knowledge, Vietnamese is one of the canonical tone languages that has been less studied than others.…”