Abstract
Phonological alternation (sound change depending on the phonological environment) poses challenges to spoken word recognition models. Mandarin Chinese T3 sandhi is such a phenomenon in which a tone 3 (T3) changes into a tone 2 (T2) when followed by another T3. In a mismatch negativity (MMN) study examining Mandarin Chinese T3 sandhi, participants passively listened to either a T2 word [tʂu2 je4] /tʂu2 je4/, a T3 word [tʂu3 je4] /tʂu3 je4/, a sandhi word [tʂu2 jen3] /tʂu3 jen3/, or a mix of T3 and sandhi word standards. The deviant in each condition was a T2 word [tʂu2]. Results showed an MMN only in the T2 and T3 conditions but not in the Sandhi or Mix conditions. All conditions also yielded omission MMNs. This pattern cannot be explained based on the surface forms of standards and deviants; rather these data suggest an underspecified or underlying T3 stored linguistic representation used in spoken word processing.
Highlights
IntroductionThe acoustic characteristics of phonemes, words, and sentences change due to a variety of factors including speaking rate, speaking style, talker, and phonological environment (Cheng, 1966; Goldinger et al, 1991)
The current study reports a mismatch negativity experiment, investigating the neural processing of Mandarin Chinese tone 3 sandhi words, to inform our understanding of the role of the acoustic input and the stored linguistic representations as listeners map the signal during spoken word recognition
Results showed that for Tone 2 condition, event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by the deviants were significantly more negative than those yielded by the first syllable of standards (β = 0.744, SE = 0.226, t = 3.290, p = 0.003), indicating an mismatch negativity (MMN) effect
Summary
The acoustic characteristics of phonemes, words, and sentences change due to a variety of factors including speaking rate, speaking style, talker, and phonological environment (Cheng, 1966; Goldinger et al, 1991). Recognition of spoken words requires mapping the variable speech input onto stored lexical representations. Understanding how the brain represents these lexical categories is relevant for theories of speech perception, as theories differ in terms of the abstract nature of the mental representations as well as the role that surface acoustic and underlying linguistic representations play in speech processing. The phonological environment affects the acoustic realization of segments in different contexts (e.g., Reetz and Jongman, 2009). The phonological environment influences the phonetic realization of tones in tone languages (Wang and Li, 1967). A Mandarin Chinese tone 3 syllable (a low-dipping tone) changes into a tone 2 syllable (a high-rising tone) when followed
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