Temporal hierarchy of intonation and tone processing in Mandarin Chinese
Intonation and lexical tone both rely on F0 in tonal languages. While the former one can indicate the speaker’s intention (e.g., raise a question or state a fact), the latter helps determine the meaning of a word. These two interact with each other in sentence, but the access order of them by the brain is unknown. The current study aimed at investigating the access order of intonation and lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese. Participants were required to listen to Mandarin sentences containing both intonation and lexical tone in the same syllable and judge the intonation (in the intonation task) and tone (in the tone task). Their behavioral reactions and mean amplitudes in ERP were recorded and analyzed. Results showed that in the intonation task, the participants responded to intonation first and then the lexical tone. In the tone task, participants were sensitive to both intonation and tone in an early interaction beginning from 100ms. Participants were alert to intonation and would process it no matter in which task, indicating the important role of intonation in human communication.