The roles of tone and syllable structure in Mandarin spoken word recognition.

Abstract

The present study adopts the gating paradigm to investigate the roles of tone, onset sonorancy, and nasal coda in Mandarin spoken word recognition. Duration‐blocked gates generated from eight monosyllabic quadruplets with matching frequencies of occurrence were used as stimuli. The initial consonant of each syllable formed the first gate, with later gates formed by 40 ms increments. Twenty‐eight native Mandarin speakers from Beijing were asked to identify each gated stimulus by writing down the Chinese characters. Isolation point (IP) based on correct tone identification as well as overall correct word identification (correct onset, rhyme, and tone) were collected. Results from both conditions showed that tone 1 has an earlier IP than tone 4, which has an earlier IP than tones 2 and 3. Sonorant‐initial syllables have an earlier IP than obstruent‐initial syllables, but further analyses of covariance indicated that this is due to the fact that IP covariates with the duration of the initial consonant. Syllables without a nasal coda have an earlier IP than syllables with a nasal coda. This effect might be due to the interference of nasalization on tone perception or the delayed tonal contour realization due to the nasal coda [Xu, (1998)].