Surface phonetic or underlying phonological representations: A mismatch negativity study of Mandarin tone assimilation

Abstract

Phonological alternation, in which a sound changes depending on its phonological environment, poses challenges to spoken word recognition models. Mandarin T3 sandhi is such a phenomenon in which a tone 3 changes into a tone 2 when followed by another T3, which raises questions regarding whether the human brain processes the surface acoustic-phonetic representation or the underlying linguistic representation of Mandarin T3 sandhi words. We conducted a mismatch negativity (MMN) study examining this issue. Participants passively listened to a T2 word [tʂu2 je4] /tʂu2 je4/, a T3 word [tʂu3 ʐən4] /tʂu3 ʐən4/, a Sandhi word [tʂu2 jen3] /tʂu3 jen3/, or a mix of T3 and sandhi words in an odd-ball paradigm. All were interspersed with a T2 word [tʂu2] (deviant). Results showed an MMN only in the T2 and T3 condition but not in the Sandhi or Mix condition. The fact that the surface acoustic information in the T2 and Sandhi conditions was identical, yet yielding disparate MMN results suggests that Mandarin speakers pr...