The roles of lexical tone and rime during Mandarin sentence comprehension: An event-related potential study

Zou, Yun; Lui, Ming; Tsang, Yiu Kei

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107578

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 41 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…At the same time, PMN results failed to show significant differences between tone mismatches and real words, suggesting that mismatching vowels may affect ERPs earlier than tones for all listeners. This pattern of results is consistent with several previous studies which provided contextual cues for lexical expectation in phrases or sentences and found reduced N400s for tone mismatches relative to rhyme mismatches (Hu et al, 2012;Pelzl et al, 2021;Zou et al, 2020), though such differences do not always appear (Brown-Schmidt and Canseco-Gonzalez, 2004;Schirmer et al, 2005;Pelzl et al, 2019). On the other hand, as we expected for these correctly judged trials, in the later LPC time window both groups displayed strong positive deflections for tone mismatches relative to the matched word condition.…”

Section: Erpssupporting

confidence: 92%

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

People who grow up speaking a language without lexical tones typically find it difficult to master tonal languages after childhood. Accumulating research suggests that much of the challenge for these second language (L2) speakers has to do not with identification of the tones themselves, but with the bindings between tones and lexical units. The question that remains open is how much of these lexical binding problems are problems of encoding (incomplete knowledge of the tone-to-word relations) vs. retrieval (failure to access those relations in online processing). While recent work using lexical decision tasks suggests that both may play a role, one issue is that failure on a lexical decision task may reflect a lack of learner confidence about what is not a word, rather than non-native representation or processing of known words. Here we provide complementary evidence using a picture-phonology matching paradigm in Mandarin in which participants decide whether or not a spoken target matches a specific image, with concurrent event-related potential (ERP) recording to provide potential insight into differences in L1 and L2 tone processing strategies. As in the lexical decision case, we find that advanced L2 learners show a clear disadvantage in accurately identifying tone mismatched targets relative to vowel mismatched targets. We explore the contribution of incomplete/uncertain lexical knowledge to this performance disadvantage by examining individual data from an explicit tone knowledge post-test. Results suggest that explicit tone word knowledge and confidence explains some but not all of the errors in picture-phonology matching. Analysis of ERPs from correct trials shows some differences in the strength of L1 and L2 responses, but does not provide clear evidence toward differences in processing that could explain the L2 disadvantage for tones. In sum, these results converge with previous evidence from lexical decision tasks in showing that advanced L2 listeners continue to have difficulties with lexical tone recognition, and in suggesting that these difficulties reflect problems both in encoding lexical tone knowledge and in retrieving that knowledge in real time.

show abstract

Section: Erpssupporting

confidence: 92%

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The altered fundamental frequency caused by CT muscle dysfunction may further impair communication ability, especially in Mandarin, because lexical tone has been reported to be able to influence spoken word recognition in Mandarin significantly [ 30 ]. Zou et al [ 31 ] also found that tone violation can dramatically increase listening comprehension error rates in Mandarin, even more than rhyme violation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cricothyroid Dysfunction in Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis Females Impairs Lexical Tone Production

Fang

Chuang

et al. 2022

JCM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this cross-sectional study, we compared voice tone and activities relating to the laryngeal muscle between unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) patients with and without cricothyroid (CT) muscle dysfunction to define how CT dysfunction affects language tone. Eighty-eight female surgery-related UVFP patients were recruited and received acoustic voice analysis and laryngeal electromyography (LEMG) when the patient was producing the four Mandarin tones. The statistical analysis was compared between UVFP patients with (CT+ group, 17 patients) and without CT muscle (CT− group, 71 patients) involvement. When producing Mandarin Tone 2, the voice tone in the CT+ group had smaller rise range (p = 0.007), lower rise rate (p = 0.002), and lower fundamental frequency (F0) at the offset point of the voice (p = 0.023). When producing Mandarin Tone 4, the voice tone in the CT+ group had smaller drop range (p = 0.019), lower drop rate (p = 0.005), and lower F0 at voice onset (p = 0.025). The CT+ group had significantly lower CT muscle activity when producing the four Mandarin tones. In conclusion, CT dysfunction causes a limitation of high-rising tone in Tone 2 and high-falling tone in Tone 4, a property that dramatically limits the tonal characteristics in Mandarin, a tonal language. This limitation could further impair the patient’s communication ability.

show abstract

“…Stimuli containing a vowel mismatch were recognized faster than those containing a lexical tone mismatch in a monitoring task (Ye & Connine, 1999). In a Chinese sentence comprehension task, target words containing rime violations (e.g., 观赚/kuan1 tʂuan4/ "look earn") elicited N400 and P600 of larger amplitudes compared with the congruent condition (e.g., 观众/kuan1 tʂuŋ4/ "audience"), while lexical tone violations (e.g., 观肿/kuan1 tʂuŋ3/ "look swelling") only elicited larger P600, indicating a comparatively later detection of lexical tone violations (Zou et al, 2020). Similar ERP patterns were also observed in the perception of Chinese idioms (Hu et al, 2012;X.…”

Section: Lexical Tone and Vowel Perception In Generalmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…On the contrary, if the tasks use highly constraining contexts that can easily evoke a top-down influence from the lexical level process to the sub-lexical level process, the processing difference between lexical tones and vowels is eliminated. However, Zou et al (2020) found that even when the target stimuli were presented in sentences that introduced strong semantic contexts, ERP patterns emerged in vowel perception and lexical tone perception still differed a lot. Therefore, the question about holistic/separate process of lexical tones and vowels is still open to be tested.…”

Section: Lexical Tone and Vowel Perception In Generalmentioning

confidence: 95%

Integral perception, but separate processing: The perceptual normalization of lexical tones and vowels

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The roles of lexical tone and rime during Mandarin sentence comprehension: An event-related potential study

Cited by 18 publications

References 41 publications

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

Advanced Second Language Learners of Mandarin Show Persistent Deficits for Lexical Tone Encoding in Picture-to-Word Form Matching

Cricothyroid Dysfunction in Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis Females Impairs Lexical Tone Production

Integral perception, but separate processing: The perceptual normalization of lexical tones and vowels

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About