Prosody and information structure in a tone language: an investigation of Mandarin Chinese

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Chuoying Ouyang ◽  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Tone Language

Influence of Musical Expertise on Segmental and Tonal Processing in Mandarin Chinese

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2701-2715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Céline Marie ◽  
Franco Delogu ◽  
Giulia Lampis ◽  
Marta Olivetti Belardinelli ◽  
Mireille Besson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Language Transfer ◽  
Transfer Effects ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Musical Expertise ◽  
Tonal Processing

A same–different task was used to test the hypothesis that musical expertise improves the discrimination of tonal and segmental (consonant, vowel) variations in a tone language, Mandarin Chinese. Two four-word sequences (prime and target) were presented to French musicians and nonmusicians unfamiliar with Mandarin, and event-related brain potentials were recorded. Musicians detected both tonal and segmental variations more accurately than nonmusicians. Moreover, tonal variations were associated with higher error rate than segmental variations and elicited an increased N2/N3 component that developed 100 msec earlier in musicians than in nonmusicians. Finally, musicians also showed enhanced P3b components to both tonal and segmental variations. These results clearly show that musical expertise influenced the perceptual processing as well as the categorization of linguistic contrasts in a foreign language. They show positive music-to-language transfer effects and open new perspectives for the learning of tone languages.

Anatomy of a Counterexample: Extraction from Relative Clauses

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivy Sichel
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Structural Ambiguity ◽  
Fine Grained Structure ◽  
Lebanese Arabic

Relative clauses (RCs) are considered islands for extraction, yet acceptable cases of overt extraction from RCs have been attested over the years in a variety of languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Japanese, Hebrew, English, Italian, Spanish, French, and also in Lebanese Arabic and Mandarin Chinese, where covert extraction from an RC is observed. The possibility for extraction has often been presented as evidence against a syntactic theory of locality, and in favor of constraints defined in terms of information structure, or processing limitations and constraints on working memory. Another possibility, still hardly explored, is that locality is determined syntactically, combined with a more fine-grained structure for RCs and a theory of how extraction from this structure interacts with the theory of locality. I argue in favor of the latter approach. I assume the structural ambiguity of RCs and argue that while externally headed RCs do block extraction, extraction is possible, under certain conditions, from a raising RC, and is formally similar to extraction from an embedded interrogative.

scholarly journals Information Structure and Word Order Preference in Child and Adult Speech of Mandarin Chinese

Languages ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 14
Author(s):  
Jidong Chen ◽  
Bhuvana Narasimhan ◽  
Angel Chan ◽  
Wenchun Yang ◽  
Shu Yang
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Noun Phrases ◽  
Late Development ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Order Preference

The acquisition of appropriate linguistic markers of information structure (IS), e.g., word order and specific lexical and syntactic constructions, is a rather late development. This study revisits the debate on language-general preferred word order in IS and examines the use of language-specific means to encode IS in Mandarin Chinese. An elicited production study of conjunct noun phrases (NPs) of new and old referents was conducted with native Mandarin-speaking children (N = 24, mean age 4;6) and adults (N = 25, mean age 26). (The age of children is conventionally notated as years;months). The result shows that adults differ significantly from children in preferring the “old-before-new” word order. This corroborates prior findings in other languages (e.g., German, English, Arabic) that adults prefer a language-general “old-before-new” IS, whereas children disprefer or show no preference for that order. Despite different word order preferences, Mandarin-speaking children and adults resemble each other in the lexical and syntactic forms to encode old and new referents: bare NPs dominate the conjunct NPs, and indefinite classifier NPs are used for both the old and the new referents, but when only one classifier phrase is produced, it is predominantly used to refer to the new referents, which suggests children’s early sensitivity to language-specific syntactic devices to mark IS.

Stop Laryngeal Distinctions Driven by Contrastive Effects of Neighboring Tones

2020 ◽  
pp. 002383092092289
Author(s):  
Sang-Im Lee-Kim
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Context Effects ◽  
Target Tone ◽  
High Tone ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Tonal Context

This study examined contrastive effects of neighboring tones that give rise to a systematic asymmetry in stop perception. Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese and naïve listeners labeled voiceless unaspirated stops preceded or followed by low or high extrinsic tonal context (e.g., maLO.pa vs. maHI.pa) either as lenis (associated with a low F0 at the vowel onset) or as fortis stops (with a high F0). Further, the target tone itself varied between level and rising (e.g., maLO.paLEV vs. maLO.paRIS). Both groups of listeners showed significant contrastive effects of extrinsic context. Specifically, more lenis responses were elicited in a high tone context than in a low one, and vice versa. This indicates that the onset F0 of a stop is perceived lower in a high tone context, which, in turn, provides positive evidence for lenis stops. This effect was more clearly pronounced for the level than for the contour tone target and also for the preceding than for the following context irrespective of linguistic experience. Despite qualitative similarities, learners showed larger effects for all F0 variables, indicating that the degree of context effects may be enhanced by one’s phonetic knowledge, namely sensitivity to F0 cues along with the processing of consecutive tones acquired through learning a tone language.

Prosodic encoding of information structure in Mandarin Chinese: Evidence from picture description task

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yifei Bi ◽  
Lesya Y. Ganushchak ◽  
Agnieszka E. Konopka ◽  
Guiqin Ren ◽  
Xue Sui ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
Picture Description ◽  
Description Task

scholarly journals Focus-marking in a tone language: Prosodic cues in Mandarin Chinese

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Iris Chuoying Ouyang ◽  
Elsi Kaiser
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Focus Marking

No abstract.

A revisit to the [Num-Cl-Modifier-de-N]/ [Modifier-de-Num-Cl‑N] variation in Mandarin Chinese

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-253
Author(s):  
Jing Jin
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Information Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Related Condition ◽  
Neutral Context ◽  
Semantic Condition ◽  
Contrastive Topic ◽  
The One ◽  
Discourse Interface

Abstract This paper investigates the licensing condition of the [Num(eral)-Cl(assifier)-Mod(ifier)-de-N(oun)] / [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] variation in Mandarin Chinese. It is observed that this variation represents a complex interface phenomenon in the nominal domain, which is subject to the semantic condition concerning the i(ndividual)-level/​s(tage)-level nature of the modifier contained on the one hand, and the discourse-related condition concerning contrastive topic (ct) on the other. Based on this, at the syntax-semantics interface level, this paper proposes a division of the syntactic domain of adnominal modification to account for the discrepancy between i‑level and s‑level modifiers in terms of their capability in forming [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] in the neutral context. In the meanwhile, at the syntax-discourse interface level, in light of the interface-induced analysis pursued by Neeleman & Van de Koot (2008) and Horvath (2010), it is claimed that the word order of [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] could be adopted as a linguistic device to encode ct within the nominal domain in Mandarin Chinese, in which case the ordering of [Mod-de-Num-Cl‑N] is licensed for the purpose of establishing a transparent mapping between syntactic configuration and information structure.

Contributions of the Fundamental, Resolved Harmonics, and Unresolved Harmonics in Tone-Phoneme Identification

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 1406-1409 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Stagray ◽  
David Downs ◽  
Ronald K. Sommers
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Lower Intensity ◽  
Higher Harmonics ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Phoneme Identification

Researchers describe Mandarin Chinese tone phonemes by their fundamental frequency (Fo) contours. However, tone phonemes are also comprised of higher harmonics that also may cue tone phonemes. We measured identification thresholds of acoustically filtered tone phonemes and found that higher harmonics, including resolved harmonics above the Fo and unresolved harmonics, cued tone phonemes. Resolved harmonics cued tone phonemes at lower intensity levels suggesting they are more practical tone-phoneme cues in everyday speech. The clear implication is that researchers should use the Fo only as a benchmark when describing tone-phoneme contours, recognizing that higher harmonics also cue tone phonemes. These results also help explain why tone-language speakers can identify tone phonemes over a telephone that attenuates selective frequencies, and suggests that hearing-impaired tone-language speakers may still identify tone phonemes when their hearing loss attenuates selective frequencies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document