Tone sandhi effect on Chinese speech perception

Abstract

Mandarin Chinese has four tones with various sandhi processes. The third tone sandhi process is when a third tone (T3) becomes a second tone (T2) before another third tone (T3). Previous studies on third tone sandhi used connected speech in their experiments. This study examines the third tone sandhi effect on Chinese listeners in a nonconnected speech condition. Full‐tone Chinese syllables were recorded in isolation. Ten Chinese listeners participated in tonal discrimination tasks which consisted of combinations of T2 and T3 (i.e., T22, T23, T32, T33). Three interstimulus intervals (ISIs) (i.e., 50, 250, 500 ms) and three types of pair conditions (minimal‐, rhyme‐, mixed‐pairs) were introduced in the experiments. The findings of this study confirm the phonological hypothesis that the third tone sandhi effect has a great impact across all the pair conditions. When discriminating T23, Chinese listeners had longer response times and more errors than other tone pairs. The phonological phenomenon of third tone sandhi persists regardless of connected or nonconnected speech conditions in Chinese spoken language. Differences in processing the tone sandhi pairs (T23) and the nontone sandhi pairs (T32) reveal the psychological reality of the third tone sandhi phonological rule.