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1
Fong, Ivan, Fenqi Wang, Kira Chan, Tyne Johnson-Dhillon, Jadeyn Trasolini, Dawn Behne, Allard Jongman, Joan Sereno, and Yue Wang. "Phonetic adaptation in conversation: The case of Cantonese tone merging." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 155, no. 3_Supplement (March 1, 2024): A314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0027635.
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Phonetic adaptation occurs when one interlocutor adjusts their speech to converge to or diverge from that of their conversation partner to enhance intelligibility. While most research investigates segmental adaptations, our study focuses on suprasegmentals, specifically Cantonese tone merging. Some Cantonese speakers (“mergers”) are found to merge certain lexical tones (e.g., mid-level Tone3 and low-level Tone6), which may cause confusions when interacting with non-merger speakers. Previous research has shown that a merger may unmerge a level tone pair (Tone3/Tone6) when shadowing a non-merger. However, still unclear is whether such changes result from automatic acoustic mimicking or reflect goal-oriented adaptations for intelligibility benefits. This study uses an unscripted conversation task involving a merger and a non-merger playing a video game, where productions of merged tones may cause confusions, thus motivating goal-oriented adaptations. Initial acoustic analyses focus on average F0 and F0 taken at 10 points along the contour in target Tone3 and Tone6 productions by mergers. Differences in these values for Tone3 versus Tone6 provide evidence that a merger is unmerging the tone pair. Preliminary results show increasing unmerging trends as the task progresses, suggesting progressive alignment toward a non-merger’s productions for intelligibility gains.
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Gbeto, Flavien. "Esquisse de la tonologie synchronique de Wemɛgbe dialecte Gbe du sud-Benin." Studies in African Linguistics 33, no. 1 (June 1, 2004): 66–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v33i1.107339.
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In this paper I show that Wemegbe, a language spoken in southern Benin, has two underlying tones, H and L, and that the surface tones M, LH and HL are derived by phonological rules. A H tone is inserted after an initial prevocalic voiceless obstruent (occurring in non verbals), creating a HL contour tone, when the vowel of the syllable is L toned. The LH tone is derived through a rightspreading rule from a L' prefix tone, which is postulated for all verbs in their imperative forms and for all nouns. Of particular interest is the fact that the rightward spreading rule for L' is blocked by a voiceless obstruent. Finally, the M tone is derived through a L-Raising rule. This analysis shows that not only can vowels be TBUs in the world's languages, but also initial root consonants can be.
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Myers, Scott. "Tone association and F₀ timing in Chichewa." Studies in African Linguistics 28, no. 2 (June 15, 1999): 215–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v28i2.107375.
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In Chichewa (Bantu, Malawi), a high tone is realized as a peak in fundamental frequency (fO). In this study, the timing of fO peaks relative to the duration of the high-toned syllable was measured for high tones in phrase-medial, -penultimate and -final positions. No phonetic support was found for the assumption in the literature that a phrase-medial high tone is spread over two syllables. Instead, it was found that such a high tone is realized with a significantly later fO peak than a high tone in the last two syllables. On the other hand, support was found for Kanerva's proposal that a phrase-final high tone is shifted in phonological representation to the phrase-penultimate syllable.
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Teeranon, Phanintra, and Rungwimol Rungrojsuwan. "Change in the Standard Thai High Tone: An Acoustic Study." MANUSYA 12, no. 3 (2009): 34–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-01203003.
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Lin, Hui-shan. "Indirect tone-prominence interaction in Kunming tone sandhi." Concentric. Studies in Linguistics 45, no. 1 (May 31, 2019): 44–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/consl.00003.li.
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Abstract Kunming exhibits a special kind of interaction between tone and prominence whereby the prosodic headedness is shown to play an indirect role in tone sandhi. Due to higher-ranked tonal faithfulness constraints, lower tones, which are universally unfavored in the head position, do not change to higher tones, and higher tones, which are universally unfavored in the non-head position, do not change to lower tones. Nonetheless, though the unfavored tone-(non-)head correlation does not directly trigger tone sandhi, it indirectly decides whether tone sandhi will take place. Falling tones, inter-syllabic tone segment disagreement, and tonal combinations with identical contours are marked tonal structures in the language. But not all these structures result in tone sandhi. The penalization of these structures is tied to an unfavored tone-(non-)head correlation; only when an undesired tone-(non-)head correlation is involved are the marked tonal structures penalized. The indirect tone-(non-)head interaction observed in Kunming is special but not unique to the language as a similar correlation is found in the Chinese dialects of Dongshi Hakka and Beijing Mandarin.
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Tu, Jung-Yueh. "Analysis of errors in Mandarin disyllabic tones produced by Vietnamese speakers." Global Chinese 9, no. 2 (September 1, 2023): 215–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/glochi-2023-0017.
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Abstract This study investigates the tone production of Mandarin disyllabic words by Vietnamese speakers. It aims to provide insights into the challenges Vietnamese speakers face when producing Mandarin tones in disyllabic words. In the study, there were 30 Vietnamese L2 learners of Mandarin, who were requested to produce 80 (4 tones × 4 tones × 5 words of each tonal combination) disyllabic words in Mandarin. The overall results showed that Tone 4 was the most difficult among the four lexical tones. In the first syllable, most errors were found for Tone 3 when followed by another Tone 3 (where the first Tone 3 should be pronounced as a rising tone, similar to Tone 2, but mispronounced as Tone 3), which indicated that Vietnamese speakers tend to underapply Mandarin third tone sandhi. In the second syllable, most errors were found for Tone 4 when preceded by Tone 4 (the second Tone 4 mispronounced as Tone 1). The findings can help explore how L2 production models can account for L2 production of Mandarin tones by considering effects of phonetic/phonological nature of Mandarin lexical tones as well as the interference arising from the L1 phonology of learners.
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Yang, Chunsheng. "Tone errors in scripted conversations of L2 Mandarin Chinese." Chinese as a Second Language Research 5, no. 1 (May 1, 2016): 63–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/caslar-2016-0003.
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AbstractThis study examines the acquisition of Mandarin tones by American English speaking second language (L2) learners. Three types of tone sequences, namely, compatible tone sequences, conflicting tone sequences, and other tone sequences, were used. The analysis of tone errors in different tone sequences showed that, while learners seemed to have acquired the Tone 3 and its sandhi, they tended to over-apply the sandhi rule in inappropriate contexts and produced tone errors. More importantly, the low and rising tones, which are generally difficult for L2 learners to produce, were the most frequent tones produced to replace other tones. More specifically, the low tone errors tended to occur at the phrase-medial position, while the rising tone errors tended to occur at the phrase-initial position. The low and rising tone errors were attributed to the difficulty in quickly changing tone targets and F0 direction in tone production, which is the product of the superimposition of English prosody.
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Mugele, Robert, and Michael Rodewald. "Aspects of Bandi tonology." Studies in African Linguistics 22, no. 2 (April 15, 1991): 105–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v22i2.107425.
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Bandi tonology offers three points of interest. The first is low tone opacity. Several tone rules act to obscure the presence of underlying low tones in Bandi. In some cases low tones are lost completely while in other cases underlying low tones are manifested phonetically as downstep tones or as the low of a falling glide. The net result of Bandi tone rules is to create considerable opacity with respect to low tones. Second, is the treatment of polarizing tones. In Bandi, polarization rules cannot merely create a new tone, but must assign tone height to an underlying tone of unspecified tone height. Finally, there are fonnal problems that result from adherence to the OCP. A rule of tonal dissimilation becomes unduly complicated if it is assumed that the OCP prohibits sequences of like tones. A contrast between nouns with a LH and LLH melody also argues against theOCP.
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Wong, Puisan, and Carrie Tsz-Tin Leung. "Suprasegmental Features Are Not Acquired Early: Perception and Production of Monosyllabic Cantonese Lexical Tones in 4- to 6-Year-Old Preschool Children." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 61, no. 5 (May 17, 2018): 1070–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2018_jslhr-s-17-0288.
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Purpose Previous studies reported that children acquire Cantonese tones before 3 years of age, supporting the assumption in models of phonological development that suprasegmental features are acquired rapidly and early in children. Yet, recent research found a large disparity in the age of Cantonese tone acquisition. This study investigated Cantonese tone development in 4- to 6-year-old children. Method Forty-eight 4- to 6-year-old Cantonese-speaking children and 28 mothers of the children labeled 30 pictures representing familiar words in the 6 tones in a picture-naming task and identified pictures representing words in different Cantonese tones in a picture-pointing task. To control for lexical biases in tone assessment, tone productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Five judges categorized the tones in filtered stimuli. Tone production accuracy, tone perception accuracy, and correlation between tone production and perception accuracy were examined. Results Children did not start to produce adultlike tones until 5 and 6 years of age. Four-year-olds produced none of the tones with adultlike accuracy. Five- and 6-year-olds attained adultlike productions in 2 (T5 and T6) to 3 (T4, T5, and T6) tones, respectively. Children made better progress in tone perception and achieved higher accuracy in perception than in production. However, children in all age groups perceived none of the tones as accurately as adults, except that T1 was perceived with adultlike accuracy by 6-year-olds. Only weak association was found between children's tone perception and production accuracy. Conclusions Contradicting to the long-held assumption that children acquire lexical tone rapidly and early before the mastery of segmentals, this study found that 4- to 6-year-old children have not mastered the perception or production of the full set of Cantonese tones in familiar monosyllabic words. Larger development was found in children's tone perception than tone production. The higher tone perception accuracy but weak correlation between tone perception and production abilities in children suggested that tone perception accuracy is not sufficient for children's tone production accuracy. The findings have clinical and theoretical implications.
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Mallipeddi, Rakesh R., Ramkumar Janakiraman, Subodha Kumar, and Seema Gupta. "The Effects of Social Media Content Created by Human Brands on Engagement: Evidence from Indian General Election 2014." Information Systems Research 32, no. 1 (March 1, 2021): 212–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/isre.2020.0961.
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With human brands or individual celebrities in fields ranging from sports to politics increasingly using social media platforms to engage with their audience, it is important to understand the key drivers of online engagement. Using Twitter data from the political domain, we show that positive and negative-toned content receive higher engagement, as measured by retweets, than mixed or neutral toned tweets. However, less popular human brands generate higher social media engagement from positive-toned content compared with more popular human brands. Therefore, we recommend that popular human brands (e.g., popular politicians or chief executive officers) keep their content objective rather than emotional. Furthermore, the tone of related brands (i.e., human brands who belong to the same political party) has a strong reinforcement effect; that is, social media engagement is higher when the tone of the focal human brand and related brands are the same and lower when the tones are different. Therefore, we prescribe that human brands actively coordinate their social media content with related brands to generate higher engagement. From human brands’ perspective, our findings recommend a comprehensive social media strategy, which takes into account the tone of content, tone of related brands’ content, and human brands’ popularity.
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Shi, Mengrui, and Qiang Li. "An fMRI Study of How Deaf Children Process the Two Tones (Second Tone and Third Tone) in Mandarin Chinese." International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics 10, no. 3 (2024): 269–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.18178/ijlll.2024.10.3.524.
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The objective of this study is to investigate the brain activity patterns of deaf children and hearing children during the processing of two different tones (second tone and third tone) using resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Furthermore, the study aims to identify the differences in brain activation regions between deaf children and hearing children during the tone processing task. Five deaf children and two hearing children were selected as participants. Resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans were conducted on the subjects using an fMRI scanner. The acquired fMRI data were then preprocessed and analyzed to examine the patterns of brain activity. Deaf children and hearing children exhibit differences in brain activation regions during the execution of tone recognition tasks. These differences can be observed in various areas such as the pre-central gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, supplementary motor area, superior parietal lobe, and interior frontal gyrus, among others. Through comparisons, the brains of deaf and mute children, although they exhibit relatively reduced activation in certain areas of the auditory cortex, may show enhanced activation in additional regions such as the middle occipital gyrus. This suggests that the brain of deaf children may undergo a reorganization of its functional networks, allowing for improved spatial perception, visual abilities, and other skills. This adaptation enables them to better process tonal information despite the absence of auditory input. These findings contribute to the understanding of the neural basis of tone processing and may help in refining intervention strategies.
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Duan, Yanhua, Yonghong Li, Li Ma, and Xianghe Meng. "Experimental Study on Monosyllabic Tones in the Dunhuang Hedong Dialect." BCP Education & Psychology 11 (December 21, 2023): 12–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.54691/pr1tgm58.
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This article uses experimental phonetics to study the tones of the Dunhuang Hedong dialect. It analyzes the tone types of the Dunhuang Hedong dialect and discusses the fundamental frequency changes and pitch range of each tone type. The experimental results show that the Dunhuang Hedong dialect has four tone types: the dark level tone (213), the light level tone (24), the rising tone (51), and the departing tone (44). The main purpose of this article is to provide an objective description of the actual situation of monosyllabic tones in the Dunhuang Hedong dialect through detailed and accurate data analysis. It summarizes the tone classes and values of monosyllabic tones and provides a certain reference value for future in-depth studies of the Dunhuang dialect.
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Geringer, John M., and Michael D. Worthy. "Effects of Tone-Quality Changes on Intonation and Tone-Quality Ratings of High School and College Instrumentalists." Journal of Research in Music Education 47, no. 2 (July 1999): 135–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3345719.
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We investigated the effects of variations in tone quality on listeners' perception of both tone quality and intonation. University music and nonmusic major instrumentalists and high school students participating in instrumental ensembles served as listeners ( N = 116). High-quality digital samples of clarinet, trumpet, and trombone tones were used. The original tone quality of each instrument was manipulated to produce experimental stimuli of “bright” and “dark” relative to the unaltered tone quality. Results indicated that the more inexperienced instrumentalists rated stimuli that were relatively “brighter' in tone quality as sharper in intonation, and conversely, stimuli of relatively ”darker' tone quality were judged to be flatter in intonation. For the brass instruments, listeners judged the unaltered and bright tones as better in tone quality than tones that were relatively dark. However, for the clarinet tones, the bright tone quality was judged to be worse than unaltered or dark-quality stimuli.
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Ludwig, Horst‐Michael, Matthias Müller, Guido Morgenthal, Thomas Eckert, and Justin Wellmann. "Nottenkämperton – Der Weg zum puzzolanischen Zusatzstoff." ce/papers 6, no. 6 (December 2023): 441–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cepa.2770.
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AbstractDie Anwendung calcinierter Tone als Zementsubstitut ist seit einigen Jahren Gegenstand intensiver Forschung. Dennoch steht, insbesondere in Deutschland, die Anwendung dieser Materialien erst am Anfang. Mit dem prognostizierten Einbruch der Hüttensand‐ und Flugascheproduktion werden calcinierte Tone auch in Deutschland mittelfristig einen wichtigen Stellenwert einnehmen. Aus Gründen der Wirtschaftlichkeit und Verfügbarkeit kommt insbesondere den „unreinen” Tonen mit geringen Kaolingehalten eine besondere Bedeutung zu. Im Rahmen dieser Studie wurde die Eignung eines vorwiegend illitischen Tones mit vielen Nebenbestandteilen für die Anwendung im Zement untersucht. Trotz des geringen Tonmineralgehaltes wurde nach der Calcination ein guter Festigkeitsbeitrag erreicht, bei gleichzeig nur geringfügig verringerter Verarbeitbarkeit. „Unreine” kaolinarme lokale Tone können demnach das Potential dafür bieten, Hüttensand und Flugasche in der Zementproduktion in Deutschland adäquat zu ersetzen. In einem weiterführenden Forschungsprojekt soll die Voraussetzung dafür geschaffen werden, eine industrielle Nutzung des untersuchten Tonvorkommens durch die Herstellung calcinierter Tone zu ermöglichen.
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Wang, Yuxia, Xiaohu Yang, Hongwei Ding, Can Xu, and Chang Liu. "Aging Effects on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Lexical Tones in Noise." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 64, no. 4 (April 14, 2021): 1376–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2020_jslhr-20-00509.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the aging effects on the categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical Tones 1–4 and Tones 1–2 in noise. It also investigated whether listeners' categorical tone perception in noise correlated with their general tone identification of 20 natural vowel-plus-tone signals in noise. Method Twelve younger and 12 older listeners with normal hearing were recruited in both tone identification and discrimination tasks in a CP paradigm where fundamental frequency contours of target stimuli varied systematically from the flat tone (Tone 1) to the rising/falling tones (Tones 2/4). Both tasks were conducted in quiet and noise with signal-to-noise ratios set at −5 and −10 dB, respectively, and general tone identification of natural speech signals was also tested in noise conditions. Results Compared with younger listeners, older listeners had shallower identification slopes and smaller discrimination peakedness in Tones 1–2/4 perception in all listening conditions, except for Tones 1–4 perception in quiet where no group differences were found. Meanwhile, noise affected Tones 1–2/4 perception: The signal-to-noise ratio condition at −10 dB brought shallower slope in Tones 1–2/4 identification and less peakedness in Tones 1–4 discrimination for both listener groups. Older listeners' CP in noise, the identification slopes in particular, positively correlated with their general tone identification in noise, but such correlations were partially missing for younger listeners. Conclusions Both aging and the presence of speech-shaped noise significantly reduced the CP of Mandarin Tones 1–2/4. Listeners' Mandarin tone recognition may be related to their CP of Mandarin tones.
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Wang, Ting, Jun Liu, Yong-hun Lee, and Yong-cheol Lee. "The interaction between tone and prosodic focus in Mandarin Chinese." Language and Linguistics / 語言暨語言學 21, no. 2 (April 2, 2020): 331–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lali.00063.wan.
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Abstract This study characterized focused tones in Mandarin Chinese through a production experiment using phone number strings. The results revealed that, although phonation cues had little effect on any focused tone, prosodic cues exhibited various patterns of distribution. Duration played an important role for each focused tone, but intensity had a relatively less salient role. Among pitch-related parameters, the raising of pitch register was an important cue when a level tone (tone 1) was focused. By contrast, due to the interaction between tone and intonation, absolute slope and pitch range had less effect on tone 1 focus. These cues, however, were prominent when contour tones (tones 2 and 4) were in focus. Unlike other focused tones that raised pitch, tone 3 focus exhibited the opposite pattern, lowering its pitch target. In the aggregation of all focused tones, it was found that only primarily pitch-related parameters were selected as the main variables discriminating one from another. The results of this study, therefore, suggest that the prosodic marking of focus is not uniform, even within a single language, but clearly differs by tone type. Accordingly, prosodic marking of focus should be considered multimodal in a tonal language.
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Ruusuvirta, Timo, Piia Astikainen, and Jan Wikgren. "Proactive Interference of Differently Ordered Tone Sequences with the Accuracy and Speed of Two-Tone Frequency Comparisons." Music Perception 19, no. 4 (2002): 551–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/mp.2002.19.4.551.
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Participants judged the direction of the frequency difference between a standard tone and a comparison tone separated by a silent interval and preceded by a series of three interfering tones. The frequencies of the interfering tones were all either lower/higher than (providing interference) or the same as (providing no interference) the standard-tone frequency. When providing interference, the interfering tones were further ordered either randomly or so that they formed melodically ascending/ descending sequences toward the standard-tone frequency. Irrespective of the order of the interfering tones, the judgments were more accurate when the interfering tones and the comparison tone deviated in frequency in the opposite, rather than the same, direction from the standard tone. Reaction times of these judgments were in line with the data based on the judgment accuracy. The results suggest that the representations of individual interfering tones, and not of anticipations extrapolated from them as a compound, were involved in proactive interference with frequency-comparison performance.
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Worthy, Michael D. "Effects of Tone-Quality Conditions on Perception and Performance of Pitch among Selected Wind Instrumentalists." Journal of Research in Music Education 48, no. 3 (October 2000): 222–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3345395.
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The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of changes in tone quality on the perception of pitch and to determine the extent to which the same tone-quality conditions would affect the performance of pitch. The experiment was conducted in two segments: a perception task that involved judgments of paired comparisons of tones, and a performance task that involved tone matching. High school and university wind instrumentalists participated in perception and performance tasks that were similar to provide a basis for comparison. Results indicated that tone-quality conditions had significant effects on the perception and performance of pitch. Subjects judged “bright” tones “brighter” in tone quality and sharper in pitch than reference tones and performed sharp when matching “bright” stimuli. Subjects judged “dark” tones “darker” in tone quality and flatter in pitch than reference tones and performed flat when matching “dark ” stimuli.
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Kuang, Yutong. "Synchronic Variation and Diachronic Evolution of Tone Patterns in Kunming Dialect." International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics 8, no. 4 (December 2022): 295–301. http://dx.doi.org/10.18178/ijlll.2022.8.4.365.
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An acoustic experiment was conducted to analyze the tonal patterns of single characters in the Kunming dialect. The experimental results show that the Kunming dialect has a semi-high flat tone for the first tone, a low descending tone for the second tone, a high descending tone for the third tone, and a low tone for the fourth tone. The first and third tones are both high, while the second and fourth are both low tones, as opposed to the tonal patterns of "flat" and "low". The newer Kunming dialects show variation. The first tone starts and ends at a higher level, the third tone's bent section disappears, and the fourth tone starts and ends at a lower level, with a shorter tone duration. The variation in tone pattern starts in the middle-aged group in the old urban, and the degree of variation is female > male, old urban > old suburban, and the youth and middle-aged group > senior group, respectively. The female tone pattern has more similar vocal tone characteristics to those in the middle-aged and youth groups.
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Li, Yanping, Michael Tyler, Denis Burnham, and Catherine Best. "Categorization and discrimination of Mandarin lexical tones by naïve English listeners." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 154, no. 4_supplement (October 1, 2023): A157. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0023113.
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Unlike tone languages such as Mandarin, English lacks tones at the sub-lexical level. Accordingly, English listeners have difficulty perceptually assimilating tones as categorized or uncategorized native segments (Perceptual Assimilation Model, PAM: Best, 1995). While English listeners can categorize the four lexical tones of Mandarin, i.e., level contour, rising, dipping, and falling, when given question, statement, exclamation, and uncertainty intonations as category choices (So & Best, 2011, 2014), this does not address tone assimilation at the segmental level. We reasoned that they might assimilate tones as non-assimilable nonspeech patterns if given visual icons as tone category choices (flat, rising, dipping, and falling lines, respectively), with no reference being made to English intonation categories. Accordingly, 76 monolingual English listeners (M age = 24.85 years, 50 females) were set two tasks: to use visual icons to categorize Mandarin tones in naturally produced tone-words (/ga, ti, tu, pu/ × 4 tones) and to discriminate all six pairwise tone contrasts. All tone pairs showed ceiling-level discrimination, and listeners split their categorizations of falling and level stimuli between the falling and flat icons, suggesting that when given visual icons, tone-naïve English listeners perceive Mandarin tones as nonspeech acoustic patterns, which is consistent with PAM’s non-assimilation predictions.
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Rungruang, Apichai, and Yanhong Mu. "Mandarin Chinese Tonal Acquisition by Thai Speakers." Asian Social Science 13, no. 5 (April 19, 2017): 107. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v13n5p107.
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The aim of the present empirical study is two-fold. The first aim is to investigate why Thai university students perceive a certain tone better than others or why a certain tone is more difficult to perceive than others. The second aim is to examine to what extent Thai university students can perceive four Chinese Mandarin tones. 14 volunteer university students (2 males; 12 females) participated in the study. Research tools were structured interview and the perception test. The findings from the interview reveal that 9 out of 14 (64%) students claimed that tone 4 was the easiest tone either to perceive or produce. In contrast, 10 out of 14 (71%) stated that tone 3 was the most difficult one to perceive. The qualitative data findings from the interview were greatly consistent with the quantitative data ones from the perception test. That is, Thai speakers performed well in tone 4 (mean scores 24.92 or 99.68%) and tone 1 (24.35 or 97.40%). On the other end of the scale, they had some difficulty identifying tone 2 (21.42 or 85.68%) and tone 3 (19.50 or 78%). It can be concluded that firstly, the hierarchy of tone accessibility from the least difficult to the most difficult one was tone 4 > tone 1 > tone 2 > tone 3. Secondly, students’ native language (Thai) or L1 plays a crucial role to their tonal acquisition when Thai speakers deal with foreign lexical tones. For one important reason, tones 1 and 4 in Chinese are very similar to the mid tone and the falling tone in Thai, respectively.
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Jurado, Carlos, Man Yui Pat Chow, Ka Man Lydia Leung, Marcelo Larrea, Juan Vizuete, Alain de Cheveigné, and Torsten Marquardt. "The Spectral Extent of Phasic Suppression of Loudness and Distortion-Product Otoacoustic Emissions by Infrasound and Low-Frequency Tones." Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 23, no. 2 (February 7, 2022): 167–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10162-021-00830-2.
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AbstractWe investigated the effect of a biasing tone close to 5, 15, or 30 Hz on the response to higher-frequency probe tones, behaviorally, and by measuring distortion-product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs). The amplitude of the biasing tone was adjusted for criterion suppression of cubic DPOAE elicited by probe tones presented between 0.7 and 8 kHz, or criterion loudness suppression of a train of tone-pip probes in the range 0.125–8 kHz. For DPOAEs, the biasing-tone level for criterion suppression increased with probe-tone frequency by 8–9 dB/octave, consistent with an apex-to-base gradient of biasing-tone-induced basilar membrane displacement, as we verified by computational simulation. In contrast, the biasing-tone level for criterion loudness suppression increased with probe frequency by only 1–3 dB/octave, reminiscent of previously published data on low-side suppression of auditory nerve responses to characteristic frequency tones. These slopes were independent of biasing-tone frequency, but the biasing-tone sensation level required for criterion suppression was ~ 10 dB lower for the two infrasound biasing tones than for the 30-Hz biasing tone. On average, biasing-tone sensation levels as low as 5 dB were sufficient to modulate the perception of higher frequency sounds. Our results are relevant for recent debates on perceptual effects of environmental noise with very low-frequency content and might offer insight into the mechanism underlying low-side suppression.
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Leben, W. R. "Tonal feet and the adaptation of English borrowings into Hausa." Studies in African Linguistics 25, no. 2 (June 15, 1996): 129–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v25i2.107400.
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This paper investigates how Hausa places a tonal interpretation on stress in English borrowings. A key intermediary in this process is the tonal foot, which is maximally disyllabic. Tonal feet are of two kinds, in complementary distribution in the data. One is interpreted as HL, or falling-toned, the other as High-toned. The analysis represents a significant advance over the less highly structured view that a simple substitution algorithm replaces stresses with tones, e.g., High tone for-stressed syllables and Low tone for unstressed. This provides a boost for the status of the tonal foot as a prosodic constituent. The analysis also has implications for Hausa non-loan word phonology in that it suggests a natural reinterpretation of claims made by Newman and Jaggar [1989].
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Köhnlein, Björn. "The complex durational relationship of contour tones and level tones." Diachronica 32, no. 2 (October 15, 2015): 231–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/dia.32.2.03koh.
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The production of a contour tone requires a longer duration than the production of a level tone. This paper demonstrates that this durational relationship becomes considerably more complex when tones are realized on bimoraic sonorant units that can support both level tones and contour tones. Evidence comes from diachronic processes in which pitch and duration interact. In languages where (intrinsic) durational differences between two groups of bimoraic units lead to tonal contrasts, the longer units commonly receive a contour tone, and the shorter ones a level tone; yet over time, the units with the fully developed contour tone tend to shorten, and those with the level tone tend to lengthen. Ultimately, this can even lead to durational reversals between the units in question. The discussion focuses primarily on Franconian tone accent dialects but also incorporates data from Estonian, Hup, Las Norias Piman and North Low Saxon.
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Chen, Ling, and Shengbing Li. "An Experimental Study of Chinese Disyllabic Tone Errors in Native French Speakers and an Investigation of Online Teaching Strategies." SHS Web of Conferences 174 (2023): 01015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/shsconf/202317401015.
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In the learning of Chinese as a second language, phonetic learning serves as the basis of the whole learning process, among which the learning of Chinese tones is of paramount importance. In this regard, this paper aims to explore the pronunciation of Chinese tones by native French speakers in the target language environment. First, through the experimental analysis as well as the recording of the tones of native French speakers, this paper selects a total of 237 disyllabic words, with a total of four combinations determined except for the combination of the same disyllabic neutral tone in the target language environment. Meanwhile, this paper utilizes PRAAT software to acquire the average frequency of tone sampling points, whereby the tone-pattern error of each tone combination can be clarified. Secondly, by comparing and analyzing the foregoing results with the tone patterns of Chinese students, this paper further finds out the tone-pattern errors of the same tone combination in disyllabic words, thus summarizing the corresponding error rules. Through the above experimental analysis, this paper concludes that the combination of Tone 3 and Tone 3 presents the highest pronunciation error rate, followed by the combination of Tone 2 and Tone 2. In addition, this paper reveals that the tone error is the main tone error and that there are also duration errors. Lastly, combined with the specific reasons for the errors, this paper proposes targeted online teaching strategies suitable for international Chinese education.
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Chin, Jessica L., and Mark Antoniou. "Using L1 tone and intonation categories to investigate patterns in nonnative tone identification." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 154, no. 4_supplement (October 1, 2023): A161. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0023130.
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Many languages utilise lexical tone, a feature which assigns meaning to words through variations in pitch contours. In some (but not all) cases, prior tone language experience can facilitate the learning of a nonnative tone language. Regardless, multiple sessions of tone training can improve nonnative tone perception for both tone and nontone L1 listeners. However, the influence of L1 tone and intonation categories on nonnative tone learning is underexplored. Across five sessions of tone training, listeners of nontonal English (n = 25), tonal Mandarin (n = 23), and tonal Vietnamese (n = 25) learned tones from an artificial language. While all groups improved in tone identification and tone word learning by session five (p < .001), Mandarin listeners outperformed the other groups overall (identification, p < .001; word learning, p < .05). Tone experience was a main effect only in word learning (p < .05). Tone- and language-specific identification patterns were also observed. The low level tone was easier for all listeners to perceive, while the tonal groups also showed greater accuracy for the mid level tone. Contrastingly, Mandarin listeners were hindered by their single L1 falling tone category when attempting to identify two distinct nonnative falling tones.
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Besouw, Rachel M. Van, Jude S. Brereton, and David M. Howard. "Range of Tuning for Tones With and Without Vibrato." Music Perception 26, no. 2 (December 1, 2008): 145–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/mp.2008.26.2.145.
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PREVIOUS STUDIES ON VIBRATO PITCH HAVE attempted to determine the "principal pitch" of vibrato tones and not the range of tuning for such tones in a melodic context. This study investigates the range of acceptable tuning (RAT) for tones with and without vibrato, using repeating ascending and descending three-tone arpeggios. The second tone in each sequence was modulated or unmodulated with an initial pitch that was flat or sharp. With each repetition the pitch of the second tone increased or decreased by 3 cents depending upon the initial pitch condition. Participants indicated when they perceived the second tone to be in tune and out of tune. The RAT for vibrato tones was approximately 10 cents greater than for unmodulated tones. This is largely due to the lower RAT limit, indicating that the carrier frequency of vibrato tones can be 10 cents flatter than the fundamental frequency of an unmodulated tone.
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Tranel, Bernard. "Tone Sandhi and vowel deletion in Margi." Studies in African Linguistics 23, no. 2 (June 15, 1993): 111–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v23i2.107415.
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Within the theoretical framework of nonlinear phonology, this paper proposes an account of tone sandhi and vowel deletion in Margi, a Chadic language spoken in Northern Nigeria. The database is Hoffman's Grammar of the Margi Language. Language-specific tonal processes in Margi are shown to originate in tone trapping, i.e., the impossibility for a tone to anchor to a skeletal slot by a universal mechanism. The paper identifies the circumstances leading to tone trapping (e.g., Vowel Elision) and formalizes the various tone-rescue processes available both word-internally and across words. Whereas trapped high tones are always saved (either taking over low-tone vowel positions or giving rise to contour tones), trapped low tones may remain trapped throughout a derivation and thus receive no phonetic realization (by universal convention).
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Hsu, Wei Chih, Jung Nan Sun, and Huai I. Wang. "An Approach to Tone Recognition of Mandarin Speech Based-On Two-Stage Model." Applied Mechanics and Materials 145 (December 2011): 297–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/amm.145.297.
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After inspecting the pitch contours of tone 1 of Mandarin speech, we found that the pitch contour of tone 1 consists of upward and downward line segments, while it is supposed that the contour of tone 1 is flat. Our study also found that tone 1 tends to be recognized as other three tones if the recognition algorithm used is based on the tone contour slope or shape. According to our experiments, we conclude that the recognition rate of the tones would be improved if two stage tone recognition scheme is conducted. At the first stage, tone one is recognized out and then the other three tones are identified at the second stage. The fundamental frequencies of input Mandarin speech of tone 1 are first retrieved from the training data and then a threshold value relating to standard deviation of fundamental frequencies is determined. In the first recognition stage, if the statistic standard deviation of fundamental frequencies is less than the determined threshold, the Mandarin speech is recognized as tone one. The input Mandarin speech which is not classified as tone 1 are the recognition targets of the second recognition stage. In the second stage, a so-called linear gradient analysis is conducted, and the tones are identified according to the derived positive or negative linear gradients. Our proposed recognition method is superior to traditional methods of Mandarin tone recognition in terms of effectiveness and recognition rate. Some experiments to prove the necessity of conducting two recognition stages will be described in detail.
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Rolle, Nicholas, and Lee Bickmore. "Outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy vs. first-last tone harmony in Cilungu." Morphology 32, no. 2 (March 10, 2022): 197–247. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11525-022-09391-3.
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AbstractWe present a case study of grammatical tone allomorphy in Cilungu (Bantu). Tense/Aspect/Mood designations (TAMs) are realized via co-exponence of prefixes, suffixes, and floating tones. In a minority of TAMs, there is allomorphy with the floating tones. For example, in the Recent Past one allomorph involves floating tone targeting the final mora of the stem ("Equation missing") versus one targeting the stem’s second mora ("Equation missing"2). For all such allomorphic TAMs, the alternation is conditioned by the tone of subject agreement markers (SMs) at the left edge of the word. If the SM is high-toned the "Equation missing" variant occurs, but if it is toneless then "Equation missing"2 occurs. We present two competing accounts of these data. Under a morphological account, we posit contextual realizational rules with multiple suppletive exponents conditioned by SM tone. In contrast, under a phonological account a ‘first-last tone harmony’ applies here, morphologically restricted to the context of SMs with a small set of TAMs. Such a harmony rule captures a generalization of these alternations: if the SM is high at the left edge then there is a grammatical high at the right edge, but if the left edge is toneless then grammatical tone does not fall on the right edge. We present several arguments in favor of the morphological analysis (suppletion) over a phonological one (harmony). Specifically, the patterns are not subject to phonological locality, other TAMs involving similar tone patterns are not subject to this harmony, and the proposed first-last tone harmony would be a highly phonologically-unnatural rule with little cross-linguistic support, and exceeding the computational properties of all well-known and established phonological operations. We conclude by discussing a major theoretical implication of the morphological account: this constitutes outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy, standardly argued to be unattested and/or impossible. Ultimately, we hold that under either account Cilungu presents a novel and important contribution to linguistic theory.
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Tong, Xiuli, Catherine McBride, and Denis Burnham. "Cues for Lexical Tone Perception in Children: Acoustic Correlates and Phonetic Context Effects." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 57, no. 5 (October 2014): 1589–605. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2014_jslhr-s-13-0145.
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Purpose The authors investigated the effects of acoustic cues (i.e., pitch height, pitch contour, and pitch onset and offset) and phonetic context cues (i.e., syllable onsets and rimes) on lexical tone perception in Cantonese-speaking children. Method Eight minimum pairs of tonal contrasts were presented in either an identical phonetic context or in different phonetic contexts (different syllable onsets and rimes). Children were instructed to engage in tone identification and tone discrimination. Results Cantonese children attended to pitch onset in perceiving similarly contoured tones and attended to pitch contour in perceiving different-contoured tones. There was a decreasing level of tone discrimination accuracy, with tone perception being easiest for same rime–different syllable onset, more difficult for different rime–same syllable onset, and most difficult for different rime–different syllable onset phonetic contexts. This pattern was observed in tonal contrasts in which the member tones had the same contour but not in ones in which the member tones had different contours. Conclusion These findings suggest that in addition to pitch contour, the pitch onset is another important acoustic cue for tone perception. The relative importance of acoustic cues for tone perception is phonetically context dependent. These findings are discussed with reference to a newly modified TRACE model for tone languages (TTRACE).
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Andersen, Torben. "Downstep in Pari the tone system of a western Nilotic language." Studies in African Linguistics 19, no. 3 (December 1, 1988): 261–316. http://dx.doi.org/10.32473/sal.v19i3.107458.
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Pari, a Western Nilotic language, has a terraced-level tone system with total downstep. Although Pari could be analyzed as having three basic tone levels and automatic downstep, there is morphological evidence that it has two basic tone levels and non-automatic downstep. Furthermore, there is evidence that downstep is the manifestation of a floating high tone. Floating tones thus behave differently from tones of deleted vowels. In spite of many surface differences between Pari and Luo, a related language, a single tone change accounts for their underlying differences.
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Xu, Yanchu. "Study on tone-to-noise ratio calculation method for tones with frequency and amplitude variation." INTER-NOISE and NOISE-CON Congress and Conference Proceedings 269, no. 1 (July 14, 2024): 1124–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.3397/nc_2024_0150.
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This paper is to present a method on improving consistency and accuracy of Tone-to-Noise Ratio (TNR) calculation for varying frequency tones in reporting prominent discrete tone according to ECMA-418-1. For given sound pressure spectrum, existing TNR calculation methods require suspect tones to be selected by the analyst, who must also determine the width of the tone, that could introduce significant uncertainty and variation between different analysts. Moreover, tones associated with unstable frequency could cause even more uncertainty in determining tone frequency band. In this study, an approach is proposed to determine the existence of discrete tone, define the tone frequency band, and lastly calculate TNR such that different analysts will be able to obtain consistent and more accurate TNR value. To validate the approach, several different noise spectra were used as mask noise, and thousands of numerically generated tones, with randomly varying frequencies and amplitudes, were modulated to the mask noise to generate synthesized waveform for TNR calculation. These randomly generated synthesized waveform were subjectively evaluated and confirmed that prominent discrete tone criteria are still applicable to tones with varying frequencies and amplitudes. The results show that proposed approach can significantly improve TNR calculation accuracy while ensure consistency between different analysts.
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Meyase, Savio M. "Polarity in a four-level tone language: tone features in Tenyidie." Phonology 38, no. 1 (February 2021): 123–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0952675721000063.
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This paper reports a new kind of tone polarity, where the phenomenon is seen in a language with four level tones, Tenyidie (also known as Angami). I show that the polarity is in the features of the tones, i.e. at a subtonal level. The data also provide evidence that tones themselves can be broken down into smaller features. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the polarity pattern observed in the language is an epiphenomenon, a reflex of the Obligatory Contour Principle, not a phonological process in its own right. I show this with the help of a new type of tonal representation. Theoretical discussions of tone polarity have so far been almost entirely restricted to African tone systems, and to languages with just two tones. This paper brings into the discussion a Tibeto-Burman language with four tones.
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So, Connie K., and Catherine T. Best. "PHONETIC INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH AND FRENCH LISTENERS’ ASSIMILATION OF MANDARIN TONES TO NATIVE PROSODIC CATEGORIES." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 36, no. 2 (May 20, 2014): 195–221. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263114000047.
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This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according to their native sentence intonation categories (i-Categories) in connected speech. Results showed that both English and French speakers categorized Mandarin tones primarily on the phonetic similarities of the pitch contours between the Mandarin tones and their native i-Categories. Moreover, French but not English speakers were able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic differences between Tone 3 (T3) and Tone 4 (T4; i.e., low or low-falling tone vs. high-falling tone), which suggests that the stress differences between these languages may affect nonnative tone perception: English uses lexical stress, whereas French does not. In the discrimination task, the French listeners’ performance was better than that of the English listeners. For each group, discrimination of the Tone 1 (T1)–T4 and Tone 2 (T2)–T3 pairs was consistently and significantly lower than that of the other tone pairs, and the difference between T1-T4 and T2-T3 was significant. Discrimination of the Mandarin tone pairs was not fully predicted by pairwise categorizations to native i-Categories, however. Some discrimination differences were observed among tone pairs showing the same assimilation patterns. Phonetic overlaps in native i-Category choices for the Mandarin tones, strength of categorization (So, 2012), and tonal coarticulation effects (Xu, 1994, 1997) may offer possible accounts of these discrepancies between categorization and discrimination performance. These findings support the perceptual assimilation model for suprasegmentals (So & Best, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013), extended to categorization of nonnative tone words within sentence contexts to native i-Categories.
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Wang, Yuxia, Xiaohu Yang, and Chang Liu. "Categorical Perception of Mandarin Chinese Tones 1–2 and Tones 1–4: Effects of Aging and Signal Duration." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 60, no. 12 (December 20, 2017): 3667–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2017_jslhr-h-17-0061.
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Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the aging effect on the categorical perception of Mandarin Chinese tones with varied fundamental frequency (F0) contours and signal duration. Method Both younger and older native Chinese listeners with normal hearing were recruited in 2 experiments: tone identification and tone discrimination on a series of stimuli with the F0 contour systematically varying from the flat tone to the rising–falling tones. Apart from F0 contour, tone duration was manipulated at 3 levels: 100, 200, and 400 ms. Results Results suggested that, compared with younger listeners, older listeners performed with shallower slope in the identification function and smaller peakedness in the discrimination function, particularly for Tones 1 and 2, whereas for Tones 1 and 4, comparable categorical perception was found between younger and older listeners. Conclusions The current study suggested that longer duration facilitated categorical perception in the flat–rising tones for the older listeners. Such an aging effect was not found with the flat–falling tones, suggesting that the aging-related deficit in categorical perception might relate to different tone types. Aging resulted in less categoricality of Mandarin tone perception for the flat–rising tones with short duration like 100 ms, possibly due to the aging-related decline in temporal processing.
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SINGH, LEHER, ALOYSIA TAN, and THILANGA D. WEWALAARACHCHI. "Lexical tone variation and spoken word recognition in preschool children: effects of perceptual salience." Journal of Child Language 44, no. 4 (July 5, 2016): 924–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000916000325.
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AbstractChildren undergo gradual progression in their ability to differentiate correct and incorrect pronunciations of words, a process that is crucial to establishing a native vocabulary. For the most part, the development of mature phonological representations has been researched by investigating children's sensitivity to consonant and vowel variation, with a much lesser focus on lexical tones. The current study investigates sensitivity to lexical tones in word recognition with specific attention to role of perceptual salience. Chinese-speaking preschoolers were presented with familiar words that were correctly pronounced, substituted for a subtle tone variant (Tones 2 and 3), or substituted for a salient tone variant (Tones 1 and 4). Results demonstrated that subtle tone variants were mistakenly perceived as correct pronunciations and only salient tone variants were recognized as mispronunciations. Findings suggest that tone integration follows a more complex developmental course that previously concluded.
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LI, XINXIN, CAROL KIT SUM TO, and MANWA LAWRENCE NG. "Effects of L1 tone on perception of L2 tone - a study of Mandarin tone learning by native Cantonese children." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20, no. 3 (March 1, 2016): 549–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728916000195.
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In the present study, the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) was tested on its applicability in child L2 lexical tone acquisition. The possible effect of L1 (Cantonese) lexical tones on L2 (Mandarin) lexical tone learning was explored. Accuracy rate and error patterns were examined with an AX discrimination task and a forced-choice identification task. Forty-nine native Cantonese-speaking students aged 8 years participated in the study. Results revealed that these children exhibited nearly perfect performance in the discrimination of Mandarin tones. However, significant tone differences were detected in the identification task. Tone 4 (T4) was identified with the lowest accuracy, and T1 with the highest. Error analysis revealed that Mandarin T2-T3 was the most confusing pair, followed by the T1-T4 pair. The inherent phonetic similarity between lexical tones in a language and the tone similarities across languages may also have contributed to perception difficulties, which could help to refine and supplement the PAM in the tonal/suprasegmental domain.
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Du, Zhaojin, and Baoya Chen. "Uyghur speakers’ acquisition of Mandarin tones." Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 38, no. 1 (May 5, 2023): 62–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00104.du.
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Abstract This paper, based on Chinese and Uyghur language contact data collected through fieldwork, discusses in detail Uyghur speakers’ acquisition of Mandarin tones. Uyghur speakers map the three native pitch accents from the Uyghur prosodic system, i.e. level, rise, and fall, to the four Mandarin tones. Initially, this mapping is random. As Chinese proficiency improves, the accent-tone mapping becomes stable. The pace, however, is not uniform for the four tones, due to competition among the three accents to map unto a given Mandarin tone. After accent-tone mapping becomes stable, the mapped accents will gradually approximate towards their target tones in pitch value, again at an uneven pace. This quantitative study reveals a two-step process in the emergence of Uyghur Chinese tones: (1) the phonological step of accent-tone mapping involving tonal categories, (2) the phonetic approximation to tonal target. A Uyghur accent does not map directly to a superficially similar tone based on pitch value.
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Ichimiya, Issei, and Hiroko Ichimiya. "Simulation of hearing loss can induce pitch shifts for complex tones." PeerJ 11 (September 15, 2023): e16053. http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.16053.
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Background Most studies on pitch shift provoked by hearing loss have been conducted using pure tones. However, many sounds encountered in everyday life are harmonic complex tones. In the present study, psychoacoustic experiments using complex tones were performed on healthy participants, and the possible mechanisms that cause pitch shift due to hearing loss are discussed. Methods Two experiments were performed in this study. In experiment 1, two tones were presented, and the participants were asked to select the tone that was higher in pitch. Partials with frequencies less than 250, 500, 750, or 1,000 Hz were eliminated from the harmonic complex tones and used as test tones to simulate low-tone hearing loss. Each tone pair was constructed such that the tone with a lower fundamental frequency (F0) was higher in terms of the frequency of the lowest partial. Furthermore, partials whose frequencies were greater than 1,300 or 1,600 Hz were also eliminated from these test tones to simulate high-tone hearing loss or modified sounds that patients may hear in everyday life. When a tone with a lower F0 was perceived as higher in pitch, it was considered a pitch shift from the expected tone. In experiment 2, tonal sequences were constructed to create a passage of the song “Lightly Row.” Similar to experiment 1, partials of harmonic complex tones were eliminated from the tones. After listening to these tonal sequences, the participants were asked if the sequences sounded correct based on the melody or off-key. Results The results showed that pitch shifts and the melody sound off-key when lower partials are eliminated from complex tones, especially when a greater number of high-frequency components are eliminated. Conclusion Considering that these experiments were performed on healthy participants, the results suggest that the pitch shifts from the expected tone when patients with hearing loss hear certain complex tones, regardless of the underlying etiology of the hearing loss.
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Fusco, Marc E., and Robert B. Katz. "Catch a Rising Tone: Selecting a Tone for a New Calling Service." Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting 36, no. 3 (October 1992): 227–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1518/107118192786751853.
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The tone used in the new service Caller ID on Call Waiting (CIDCW) must be reliably detected by customer premises equipment (CPE), so that it can prepare to receive caller ID data, and it should alert customers to new calls but without being annoying. To help select a tone, the first experiment of this study examined the acceptability of a series of high-frequency dual tones that might be able to perform the required CPE signaling. Subjects were presented with the tones under circumstances in which they would typically be heard (while talking and listening over the telephone) and rated the sound quality of the tones. Long bursts of tones were presented as well as short bursts prepended or appended to the 440-Hz tone used in Call Waiting service. The results suggested that customers may find high-frequency dual tones acceptable. To determine acceptable parameters of tones, in the second experiment, subjects rated the loudness of selected tones as their length and power were varied.
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Pelzl, Eric, Matthew T. Carlson, Taomei Guo, Carrie N. Jackson, and Janet G. van Hell. "Tuning out tone errors? Native listeners do not down-weight tones when hearing unsystematic tone errors in foreign-accented Mandarin." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 24, no. 1 (April 29, 2020): 215–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728920000280.
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AbstractListeners can adapt to errors in foreign-accented speech, but not all errors are alike. We investigated whether exposure to unsystematic tone errors in second language Mandarin impacts responses to accurately produced words. Native Mandarin speakers completed a cross-modal priming task with words produced by foreign-accented talkers who either produced consistently correct tones, or frequent tone errors. Facilitation from primes bearing correct tones was unaffected by the presence of tone errors elsewhere in the talker's speech. However, primes bearing tone errors inhibited recognition of real words and elicited stronger accentedness ratings. We consider theoretical implications for tone in foreign-accent adaptation.
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Ding, Hongdi. "Phonology of Adur Niesu in Liangshan, Sichuan." Languages 8, no. 3 (June 30, 2023): 164. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages8030164.
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This study describes the segmental and suprasegmental phonology of Adur Niesu, a Loloish (or Ngwi) language spoken mainly in Liangshan, Sichuan, southwest China. Phonemically, there are 41 consonants, 10 monophthongs and 1 diphthong in Adur Niesu. All Adur syllables are open. Its segmental changes mainly happen to the vowels, featuring high vowel fricativization, vowel lowering, vowel centralization, vowel assimilation and vowel fusion. It is common for Adur Niesu syllables to be reduced in continuous speech, with floating tones left. There are three main types of syllable reduction: complete reduction including the segment and tone, partial reduction with a floating tone left, and partial reduction with the initial consonant left. Adur Niesu employs tones as an important means for lexical contrast, namely, high-level tone 55, mid-level tone 33, and low-falling tone 21. There is also a sandhi tone 44. There are two types of tonal alternation: tone sandhi and tone change. Tone sandhi occurs at both word and phrasal levels, and is conditioned by the phonetic environment, while tone change occurs due to the morphosyntactic environment. Finally, some seeming tonal alternation is the result of a floating tone after syllable reduction.
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Candra, Haryono. "TONE TEACHING PLAN DESIGNED FOR INDONESIAN CHINESE BEGINNERS." Lingua Didaktika: Jurnal Bahasa dan Pembelajaran Bahasa 13, no. 2 (December 1, 2019): 84. http://dx.doi.org/10.24036/ld.v13i2.105173.
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Chinese is a tonal language, and Chinese tones can differentiate meanings of Chinese characters. In contrast, Indonesian is a language without tones, which explains why Indonesians have trouble acquiring tones when beginning to learn Chinese. Having recognized the importance of Chinese tones in teaching Indonesian beginners Chinese, we propose in this article a tone teaching plan designed for Indonesian Chinese beginners based on detailed analysis of previous research. The plan was tested at the Pahoa School in Tangerang District, Jakarta, Indonesia. The participants were 74 middle school students who had never learnt Chinese before. After the experiment, the questionnaires were used to collect data. It was found that this teaching plan was effective. In terms of mono-syllable adjustment, most students can make four tones of Chinese, especially rising tones and falling-rising tones; In terms of bisyllable tone sandhi, most students can master the law of tone change. However, this teaching plan also has some shortcomings. For example, the forms of tone teaching and training are not diversified; the design of the neutral tones teaching is not comprehensive enough; and the distribution of tone teaching items is uneven. These drawbacks can be further improved in future research.
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SHEN, GUANNAN, and KAREN FROUD. "Electrophysiological correlates of categorical perception of lexical tones by English learners of Mandarin Chinese: an ERP study." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 22, no. 2 (April 6, 2018): 253–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s136672891800038x.
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This study examines brain responses to boundary effects with respect to Mandarin lexical tone continua for three groups of adult listeners: (1) native English speakers who took advanced Mandarin courses; (2) naïve English speakers; and (3) native Mandarin speakers. A cross-boundary tone pair and a within-category tone pair derived from tonal contrasts (Mandarin Tone 1/Tone 4; Tone 2/Tone 3) with equal physical/acoustical distance were used in an auditory oddball paradigm. For native Mandarin speakers, the cross-category deviant elicited a larger MMN over left hemisphere sensors and larger P300 responses over both hemispheres relative to within-category deviants, suggesting categorical perception of tones at both pre-attentive and attentional stages of processing. In contrast, native English speakers and Mandarin learners did not demonstrate categorical effects. However, learners of Mandarin showed larger P300 responses than the other two groups, suggesting heightened sensitivity to tones and possibly greater attentional resource allocation to tone identification.
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WU, JUNRU, YIYA CHEN, VINCENT J. VAN HEUVEN, and NIELS O. SCHILLER. "Interlingual two-to-one mapping of tonal categories." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20, no. 4 (May 12, 2016): 813–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728916000493.
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Both Standard Chinese (SC) high- and low-rising tones sound like the rising tone in Jinan Mandarin (JM) Chinese. Acoustically (Experiment 1), the JM rising tone overlaps with both SC rising tones, but more with the high-rising tone than with the low-rising tone. Perceptually (Experiment 2), the JM rising tone was more likely identified as the SC high-rising tone by SC monolinguals. Experiment 3 examined the role of this two-to-one interlingual tonal mapping in bilingual lexical access. Final high-rising SC pseudo-words were more frequently and more quickly accepted as JM real words than final low-rising SC pseudo-words were. However, both high- and low-rising SC pseudo-words triggered equivalent facilitatory semantic priming on JM real-word targets. The results suggest that different tones are represented in the bilinguals’ mental lexicon in terms of fine-grained and sometimes overlapping acoustic specifications. Lexical activation and semantic activation are partially independent.
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Intajamornrak, Chommanad. "Thai Tones Produced by Tonal and Nontonal Language Speakers: An Acoustic Study." MANUSYA 20, no. 2 (2017): 1–26. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-02002001.
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The purpose of this paper was to analyze the acoustic characteristics of Thai tones produced by tonal language speakers, namely Vietnamese and Burmese, and non-tonal language speakers, namely Khmer and Malay, in citation form and connected speech. The test words in citation form and connected speech comprised five tones, which were the Mid tone, the Low tone, the Falling tone, the High tone, and the Rising tone occurring in non-checked and checked syllables. The informants were twenty-four Vietnamese, Burmese, Khmer, and Malay native speakers with high experience in Thai (three speakers for each language) and low experience in Thai (three speakers for each language). The informants’ speech was recorded directly on to a computer. The fundamental frequencies (F0) of tones were measured using Praat Version 5.1.43 and then converted to semitones.
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Han, Yueqiao, Martijn Goudbeek, Maria Mos, and Marc Swerts. "Relative Contribution of Auditory and Visual Information to Mandarin Chinese Tone Identification by Native and Tone-naïve Listeners." Language and Speech 63, no. 4 (December 30, 2019): 856–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830919889995.
Full textAbstract:
Speech perception is a multisensory process: what we hear can be affected by what we see. For instance, the McGurk effect occurs when auditory speech is presented in synchrony with discrepant visual information. A large number of studies have targeted the McGurk effect at the segmental level of speech (mainly consonant perception), which tends to be visually salient (lip-reading based), while the present study aims to extend the existing body of literature to the suprasegmental level, that is, investigating a McGurk effect for the identification of tones in Mandarin Chinese. Previous studies have shown that visual information does play a role in Chinese tone perception, and that the different tones correlate with variable movements of the head and neck. We constructed various tone combinations of congruent and incongruent auditory-visual materials (10 syllables with 16 tone combinations each) and presented them to native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and speakers of tone-naïve languages. In line with our previous work, we found that tone identification varies with individual tones, with tone 3 (the low-dipping tone) being the easiest one to identify, whereas tone 4 (the high-falling tone) was the most difficult one. We found that both groups of participants mainly relied on auditory input (instead of visual input), and that the auditory reliance for Chinese subjects was even stronger. The results did not show evidence for auditory-visual integration among native participants, while visual information is helpful for tone-naïve participants. However, even for this group, visual information only marginally increases the accuracy in the tone identification task, and this increase depends on the tone in question.
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Choi, William. "The Selectivity of Musical Advantage." Music Perception 37, no. 5 (June 2020): 423–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/mp.2020.37.5.423.
Full textAbstract:
The OPERA hypothesis theorizes how musical experience heightens perceptual acuity to lexical tones. One missing element in the hypothesis is whether musical advantage is general to all or specific to some lexical tones. To further extend the hypothesis, this study investigated whether English musicians consistently outperformed English nonmusicians in perceiving a variety of Cantonese tones. In an AXB discrimination task, the musicians exhibited superior discriminatory performance over the nonmusicians only in the high level, high rising, and mid-level tone contexts. Similarly, in a Cantonese tone sequence recall task, the musicians significantly outperformed the nonmusicians only in the contour tone context but not in the level tone context. Collectively, the results reflect the selectivity of musical advantage—musical experience is only advantageous to the perception of some but not all Cantonese tones, and elements of selectivity can be introduced to the OPERA hypothesis. Methodologically, the findings highlight the need to include a wide variety of lexical tone contrasts when studying music-to-language transfer.
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Mineau, Suzette M., and Robert S. Schlauch. "Threshold Measurement for Patients With Tinnitus." American Journal of Audiology 6, no. 1 (March 1997): 52–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/1059-0889.0601.52.
Full textAbstract:
This study compared the effectiveness of pulsed tones (200 ms on/200 ms off) and continuous tones (1 to 2 s) for measuring thresholds in patients with tinnitus. Sixty veterans with tonal tinnitus and a history consistent with noise-induced hearing loss participated. Half were assigned to a pulsed-tone group; half were assigned to a continuous-tone group. Air-conduction thresholds were measured twice for each patient in a single session for octave intervals between 250 Hz and 4000 Hz. Results indicated no significant difference between groups for test-retest differences, but overall more presentations were required to measure thresholds with continuous tones than with pulsed tones at 4000 Hz. Moreover, the continuous-tone group had, on average, more false-positive responses than the pulsed-tone group. This study supports the clinical belief that pulsed tones are preferred over continuous tones for measuring thresholds for persons with tinnitus.