The use of tonal coarticulation cues in Cantonese spoken word recognition.

Zhen Qin,Jingwei Zhang

doi:10.1121/10.0009728

Abstract

Previous studies suggest that listeners may use segmental coarticulation cues to facilitate spoken word recognition. Based on existing production studies which showed a pre-low raising effect in Cantonese tonal coarticulation, this study used a word identification task to investigate whether the tonal coarticulatory cue, carried by high-level and rising tones, was used when native listeners recognized pre-low and pre-high disyllabic words. The finding indicated that the listeners may rely on F0 of the rising tone to resolve lexical competition when hearing pre-high words. However, it did not provide evidence supporting the use of pre-low raising cue in spoken word recognition.

Highlights

A fundamental question in speech perception is how listeners deal with variability of speech sounds, which are often differently articulated under the influence of neighboring sounds
The present study used a word identification task to investigate whether Cantonese listeners would use the anticipatory pre-low raising (PLR) cue, carried by T1 and T2 in syllable 1, to identify Cantonese disyllabic words
When hearing a pre-high word, the Cantonese target and competitor words revealed more lexical competition when the competitor word was a pre-high word in the match condition, and they revealed less competition when the competitor word was a pre-low word in the mismatch condition

Summary

Introduction

A fundamental question in speech perception is how listeners deal with variability of speech sounds, which are often differently articulated under the influence of neighboring sounds. Previous studies examined how anticipatory coarticulation cues of vowels (Beddor et al, 2013; Fowler and Brown, 2000) and consonants (Salverda et al, 2014) were used to identify or discriminate (English) words. The findings suggested that the coarticulation cues may facilitate spoken word recognition with participants showing faster and/or more accurate responses when they are available for use. Beddor et al (2013) conducted a spoken word recognition study to further examine English listeners’ use of coarticulatory nasalization of vowels to anticipate the upcoming nasal consonants in their online processing. When participants heard a target word (e.g., bent; heard in the signal) with coarticulatory nasalization early or late included in the vowels, they were faster to respond by clicking the mouse if the competitor word (not heard in the signal) did NOT have a nasal following the vowels (e.g., bet; the target and competitor were mismatched in the pattern of vowel nasalization). Given listeners’ use of anticipatory coarticulation cues in segments, the present study examines whether, and if so how, anticipatory coarticulation cues of lexical tones facilitate recognition of spoken words

Methods

Results

Conclusion