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.

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.

Kumam

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-629
Author(s):  
Osamu Hieda
Keyword(s):  
Direct Perception ◽  
High Tone ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Perception Verbs ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Indirect Perception

Kumam is a Western Nilotic language that is spoken in central Uganda. This chapter focuses on the formation of a double downstep high tone, the function of middle sentences, and evidentiality in complementation. Kumam is a tone language with a low and a high toneme, exhibiting a double downstep high tone as a feature. Aspect (imperfective vs. perfective) is marked obligatorily with a suprasegmental morpheme, while tense is not marked in verbal complexes. Tense is expressed lexically. Kumam has no passivization, but middle sentences function as a passive equivalent instead. Kumam has two types of complementation, “paratactic” and “hypotactic”, that are different syntactically and semantically. For instance, when perception verbs are followed by a “paratactic” clause, they express direct perception. When they are followed by a “hypotactic” clause, they express indirect perception. There is the relationship between the complement types and evidentiality.

The non-terracing tone system of Lolobi-Siwu

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin C. Ford ◽  
Robert K. Iddah
Keyword(s):  
High Tone ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Volta Region

AbstractSiwu, a Ghana-Togo Mountain language spoken in Volta Region, Ghana, is a lexical tone language with three level tones, Low, High and Extra-high. Siwu has three distinct end-tones to mark positive-imperatives, non-WH-interrogatives, and negatives, and an additional end-tone to mark emphatic questions. All words form four tone classes – those with final Low tones which do not affect following tones, and three other classes, two of which assimilate following tones, and one which dissimilates following High and Extra-high tones. Two floating tones are posited: an Extra-high tone as an

Silences in Music are Musical Not Silent: An Exploratory Study of Context Effects on the Experience of Musical Pauses

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 485-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Context Effects ◽  
The Other ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
Musical Excerpts ◽  
Tonal Context ◽  
Musical Context

SILENCES IN MUSIC ARE DISTINGUISHED acoustically along only one dimension: the length of time they occupy. However, like pauses in speech, they are distinguished syntactically along many dimensions, depending on the context in which they occur. In two experiments, one using musical excerpts from commercially available recordings, and the other using simpler constructed excerpts, participants' reactions to silences were assessed. Participants pressed a button when they heard a period of silence begin and end, moved a slider to indicate perceived changes in musical tension across the course of each excerpt, and answered a series of questions about each silence, including questions about its duration, placement, salience, and metric qualities. Musical context, especially tonal context, affected the response to silence as measured by all three tasks. Specifically, silences following tonal closure were identified more quickly and perceived as less tense than silences following music lacking such closure.

Knowledge of English verb phrase ellipsis by speakers of Arabic and Chinese

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Sentence Completion ◽  
Verb Phrase Ellipsis ◽  
Persistent Problem ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Verb Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
English Verb

English verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) involves both syntactic and discourse information. The present study investigates knowledge of these properties by L1 speakers of Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. Three issues are addressed. Can the participants acquire syntactic properties of VPE that differ from their L1s and are under-determined by positive evidence? Can they acquire all of the syntactic properties of VPE that differ from their L1s? Can they successfully integrate their knowledge of the syntax of VPE with discourse information determining felicity? Results from a sentence completion judgement task are broadly consistent with the L2 participants having Universal Grammar (UG)-constrained grammars for VPE, and with their being able to successfully integrate syntactic representations with discourse information. A persistent problem with an uninterpretable feature is discussed, as are the implications of the findings for the claim that VPE involves gradient grammaticality.

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.

scholarly journals Pitch Accent in Korean

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiyuki Ito ◽  
Michael J. Kenstowicz
Keyword(s):  
Pitch Accent ◽  
High Tone ◽  
Tone Language ◽  
Initial Syllable ◽  
Pitch Pattern ◽  
Pitch Patterns ◽  
Low Tone ◽  
Phonetic Realization ◽  
Pitch Accents ◽  
Middle Korean

Typologically, pitch-accent languages stand between stress languages like Spanish and tone languages like Shona, and share properties of both. In a stress language, typically just one syllable per word is accented and bears the major stress (cf. Spanish sábana ‘sheet,’ sabána ‘plain,’ panamá ‘Panama’). In a tone language, the number of distinctions grows geometrically with the size of the word. So in Shona, which contrasts high versus low tone, trisyllabic words have eight possible pitch patterns. In a canonical pitch-accent language such as Japanese, just one syllable (or mora) per word is singled out as distinctive, as in Spanish. Each syllable in the word is assigned a high or low tone (as in Shona); however, this assignment is predictable based on the location of the accented syllable. The Korean dialects spoken in the southeast Kyengsang and northeast Hamkyeng regions retain the pitch-accent distinctions that developed by the period of Middle Korean (15th–16th centuries). For example, in Hamkyeng a three-syllable word can have one of four possible pitch patterns, which are assigned by rules that refer to the accented syllable. The accented syllable has a high tone, and following syllables have low tones. Then the high tone of the accented syllable spreads up to the initial syllable, which is low. Thus, /MUcike/ ‘rainbow’ is realized as high-low-low, /aCImi/ ‘aunt’ is realized as low-high-low, and /menaRI/ ‘parsley’ is realized as low-high-high. An atonic word such as /cintallɛ/ ‘azalea’ has the same low-high-high pitch pattern as ‘parsley’ when realized alone. But the two types are distinguished when combined with a particle such as /MAN/ ‘only’ that bears an underlying accent: /menaRI+MAN/ ‘only parsely’ is realized as low-high-high-low while /cintallɛ+MAN/ ‘only azelea’ is realized as low-high-high-high. This difference can be explained by saying that the underlying accent on the particle is deleted if the stem bears an accent. The result is that only one syllable per word may bear an accent (similar to Spanish). On the other hand, since the accent is realized with pitch distinctions, tonal assimilation rules are prevalent in pitch-accent languages. This article begins with a description of the Middle Korean pitch-accent system and its evolution into the modern dialects, with a focus on Kyengsang. Alternative synchronic analyses of the accentual alternations that arise when a stem is combined with inflectional particles are then considered. The discussion proceeds to the phonetic realization of the contrasting accents, their realizations in compounds and phrases, and the adaptation of loanwords. The final sections treat the lexical restructuring and variable distribution of the pitch accents and their emergence from predictable word-final accent in an earlier stage of Proto-Korean.

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.

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