Mandarin Tone Research Articles

Transcutaneous Auricular Vagus Nerve Stimulation Modulates Performance but Not Pupil Size During Nonnative Speech Category Learning.

Subthreshold transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) synchronized with behavioral training can selectively enhance nonnative speech category learning in adults. Prior work has demonstrated that behavioral performance increases when taVNS is paired with easier-to-learn Mandarin tone categories in native English listeners, relative to when taVNS is paired with harder-to-learn Mandarin tone categories or without taVNS. Mechanistically, this temporally precise plasticity has been attributed to noradrenergic modulation. However, prior work did not specifically utilize methodologies that indexed noradrenergic modulation and, therefore, was unable to explicitly test this hypothesis. Our goal for this study was to use pupillometry to gain mechanistic insights into taVNS behavioral effects. Thirty-eight participants learned to categorize Mandarin tones while pupillometry was recorded. In a double-blinded design, participants were divided into two taVNS groups that, as in the prior study, differed according to whether taVNS was paired with easier-to-learn tones or harder-to-learn tones. Learning performance and pupillary responses were measured using linear mixed-effects models. We found that taVNS did not have any tone-specific or group behavioral or pupillary effects. However, in an exploratory analysis, we observed that taVNS did lead to faster rates of learning on trials paired with stimulation, particularly for those who were stimulated at lower amplitudes. Our results suggest that pupillary responses may not be a reliable marker of locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system activity in humans. However, future research should systematically examine the effects of stimulation amplitude on both behavior and pupillary responses. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24036666.

Contextual effects on spoken word processing: An eye-tracking study of the time course of tone and vowel activation in Mandarin.

Lexical access is highly contextual. For example, vowel (rime) information is prioritized over tone in the lexical access of isolated words in Mandarin Chinese, but these roles are flipped in constraining contexts. The time course of these contextual effects remains unclear, and so here we tracked the real-time eye gaze of native Mandarin speakers in a visual-world paradigm. While listening to a noun classifier, before the target noun was even uttered, gaze to the target noun was already greater than looking to phonologically unrelated distractors. Critically, there was also more distraction from a cohort competitor (tone information) than a segmental competitor (vowel information) in more semantically constraining contexts. Results confirm that phonological activation in Mandarin lexical access is highly sensitive to context, with tone taking priority over vowel information even before a target word is heard. Results suggest that phonological activation in real-time lexical access may be highly context-specific across languages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

F0 range instead of F0 slope is the primary cue for the falling tone of Mandarin.

It has been well known that rising/falling pitch is employed to distinguish the rising (R) or falling (F) tones from the high-level (H) tone in Mandarin, but whether F0 range or F0 slope is the more critical F0 cue to perception is still inconclusive. To clarify this issue quantitatively, we took the F tone as the test case, and conducted two-alternative forced choice identification tests on two types of two-dimensional high-level-falling (H-F) tonal continua, one of which was manipulated along F0 range and duration ("F0 range continuum") while the other along F0 slope and duration ("F0 slope continuum"). Experimental results indicated that F0 range was the primary cue because it resulted in a more robust (less duration-dependent) perceptual boundary than F0 slope. Meanwhile, the perceptual boundary in F0 range was not fully independent of but mildly modulated by duration, suggesting that duration (or equivalently, F0 slope) played a supplementary role in identifying the H-F tonal contrast.

Phonolexical processing of Mandarin segments and tones by English speakers at different Mandarin proficiency levels

The current study examined the phonolexical processing of Mandarin segments and tones by English speakers at different Mandarin proficiency levels. Eleven English speakers naive to Mandarin, 15 intermediate and 9 advanced second language (L2) learners participated in a word-learning experiment. After learning the sound and meaning of 16 Mandarin disyllabic words, they judged the matching between sound and meaning pairs, with half of the pairs being complete matches while the other half contained segmental or tonal mismatches. The results showed that all three groups were more sensitive to segmental than tonal mismatches. The two learner groups outperformed the Naive group on segmental mismatches but not on tonal mismatches. However, their reaction times revealed that the learners but not the Naive group attended to tonal variations. The current findings suggest that increasing L2 experience has limited benefit on learners’ phonolexical processing of L2 tones, probably due to their non-tonal native language background. Experience in a tonal L2 may enhance learners’ attention to the tonal dimension but may not necessarily improve their accuracy.

Different facial cues for different speech styles in Mandarin tone articulation

Visual facial information, particularly hyperarticulated lip movements in clear speech, has been shown to benefit segmental speech perception. Little research has focused on prosody, such as lexical tone, presumably because production of prosody primarily involves laryngeal activities not necessarily distinguishable through visible articulatory movements. However, there is evidence that head, eyebrow, and lip movements correlate with production of pitch-related variations. One subsequent question is whether such visual cues are linguistically meaningful. In this study, we compare movements of the head, eyebrows and lips associated with plain (conversational) vs. clear speech styles of Mandarin tone articulation to examine the extent to which clear-speech modifications involve signal-based overall exaggerated facial movements or code-based enhancement of linguistically relevant articulatory movements. Applying computer-vision techniques to recorded speech, visible movements of the frontal face were tracked and measured for 20 native Mandarin speakers speaking in two speech styles: plain and clear. Thirty-three head, eyebrow and lip movement features based on distance, time, and kinematics were extracted from each individual tone word. A random forest classifier was used to identify the important features that differentiate the two styles across tones and for each tone. Mixed-effects models were then performed to determine the features that were significantly different between the two styles. Overall, for all the four Mandarin tones, we found longer duration and greater movements of the head, eyebrows, and lips in clear speech than in plain speech. Additionally, across tones, the maximum movement happened relatively earlier in clear than plain speech. Although limited evidence of tone-specific modifications was also observed, the cues involved overlap with signal-based changes. These findings suggest that visual facial tonal modifications for clear speech primarily adopt signal-based general emphatic cues that strengthen signal saliency.

A Mandarin Tone Recognition Algorithm Based on Random Forest and Feature Fusion †

In human–computer interaction (HCI) systems for Mandarin learning, tone recognition is of great importance. A brand-new tone recognition method based on random forest (RF) and feature fusion is proposed in this study. Firstly, three fusion feature sets (FFSs) were created by using different fusion methods on sound source features linked to Mandarin syllable tone. Following the construction of the CART decision trees using the three FFSs, modeling and optimization of the corresponding RF tone classifiers were performed. The method was tested and evaluated on the Syllable Corpus of Standard Chinese (SCSC), which is a speaker-independent Mandarin monosyllable corpus. Additionally, the effects were also assessed on small sample sets. The results show that the tone recognition algorithm can achieve high tone recognition accuracy and has good generalization capability and classification ability with unbalanced data. This indicates that the proposed approach is highly efficient and robust and is appropriate for mobile HCI learning systems.

Emotional tones of voice affect the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones.

Lexical tones and emotions are conveyed by a similar set of acoustic parameters; therefore, listeners of tonal languages face the challenge of processing lexical tones and emotions in the acoustic signal concurrently. This study examined how emotions affect the acoustics and perception of Mandarin tones. In Experiment 1, Mandarin tones were produced by professional actors with angry, fear, happy, sad, and neutral tones of voice. Acoustic analyses on mean F0, F0 range, mean amplitude, and duration were conducted on syllables excised from a carrier phrase. The results showed that emotions affect Mandarin tone acoustics to different degrees depending on specific Mandarin tones and specific emotions. In Experiment 2, selected syllables from Experiment 1 were presented in isolation or in context. Listeners were asked to identify the Mandarin tones and emotions of the syllables. The results showed that emotions affect Mandarin tone identification to a greater extent than Mandarin tones affect emotion recognition. Both Mandarin tones and emotions were identified more accurately in syllables presented with the carrier phrase, but the carrier phrase affected Mandarin tone identification and emotion recognition to different degrees. These findings suggest that lexical tones and emotions interact in complex but systematic ways.

Production of Mandarin Chinese Tones by Sri Lankan CFL Learners: An Acoustic Analysis

Tonal variation in Mandarin forms a relationship with the meanings of words at a lexical level. Tones and tone sandhi are considered distinctive features of Mandarin Chinese phonetics; thus, acquiring accurate Mandarin pronunciation is challenging for speakers of other languages. The present study examined the production of Mandarin tones by Sri Lankan learners through acoustic analysis of f0 using Praat. The study participants were seven (n=7) undergraduate students at intermediate-level Chinese. Each participant recorded a sample of 20 elements, totaling 140 at three tiers: isolation, disyllabic form, and synthesis. The recorded acoustic data were analyzed using Praat 5.4.04 and SPSS Statistics 21. The results indicated that the mean f0 values of the realization of the four tones by the informants are heterogenous at all three tiers. The realization of T3 demonstrated a low accuracy, while T2 was realized with the highest accuracy at all three tiers. As revealed by the tone sandhi analysis, participants have resorted to the underlying representation of the tone sandhi than the surface realization.

Tone evaluation of Ling sound test in Mandarin tone version.

The Ling sound test cannot provide the test of Chinese tone for preschool children with hearing aid and cochlear implants. The paper tries to design a new tone test method composed of the Ling sound test and four Chinese tones to evaluate the hearing level of Chinese hearing-impaired children. The tone identification rates of 20 cochlear implant children were statistically analyzed to verify the validity of the Ling sound test in the Chinese tone version. In addition, this paper analyzed the pronunciation characteristics of the Ling sound test in the Chongqing-accented Mandarin version of 20 subjects. The identification rate of Ling six sounds was more than 97.0%, the identification rate of tone was more than 81.0%, and the identification rate of vowels was 83.1%, which was higher than that of consonants 79.0%. The Ling sound test n the Chongqing-accented Mandarin version has a narrower frequency range. The results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the Ling sound test in the Chinese tone version in the assessment of frequency range and tone identification for cochlear implant users.

Studying Mandarin Tone sandhi in interaction

The Mandarin low-dipping tone (T3) undergoes an alteration, tone sandhi, when followed by another T3. The resulting F0 is superficially the same as that of the rising tone (T2). We investigated how Mandarin speakers adapt their speech production to overcome potential ambiguities induced by T3 sandhi during an interactive task. Ten pairs of Chinese participants completed an interactive phrase matching task. Participants were shown displays with Chinese phrases (surname + title, e.g., 1a-b). One participant read an indicated phrase which the other selected from their display. There were two conditions. In the no sandhi condition (1a-b), the title did not induce sandhi, and should result in distinct F0 patterns for the surnames. In the sandhi condition (2a-b), the title induced T3 sandhi, and should result in homophonous surnames. 1a 卢侦探 (lu2 tʃ̺ən1tan4 “Detective Lu”) 2a 卢主任 (lu2 tʃ̺u3ɹ̺ən4 “Director Lu”) 1b 鲁侦探 (lu3 tʃ̺ən1tan4 “Detective Lu”) 2b 鲁主任 (lu3 tʃ̺u3ɹ̺ən4 “Director Lu”) Task performance showed clear evidence of sandhi-induced ambiguity. Examination of accuracy and tone acoustics suggested that pairs deployed different strategies to attempt to overcome sandhi-induced ambiguity, including exaggerating F0 rise or T3 duration, or adding a pause to avoid applying sandhi processes.

Sustainable Benefits of High Variability Phonetic Training in Mandarin-speaking Kindergarteners With Cochlear Implants: Evidence From Categorical Perception of Lexical Tones.

Although pitch reception poses a great challenge for individuals with cochlear implants (CIs), formal auditory training (e.g., high variability phonetic training [HVPT]) has been shown to provide direct benefits in pitch-related perceptual performances such as lexical tone recognition for CI users. As lexical tones in spoken language are expressed with a multitude of distinct spectral, temporal, and intensity cues, it is important to determine the sources of training benefits for CI users. The purpose of the present study was to conduct a rigorous fine-scale evaluation with the categorical perception (CP) paradigm to control the acoustic parameters and test the efficacy and sustainability of HVPT for Mandarin-speaking pediatric CI recipients. The main hypothesis was that HVPT-induced perceptual learning would greatly enhance CI users' ability to extract the primary pitch contours from spoken words for lexical tone identification and discrimination. Furthermore, individual differences in immediate and long-term gains from training would likely be attributable to baseline performance and duration of CI use. Twenty-eight prelingually deaf Mandarin-speaking kindergarteners with CIs were tested. Half of them received five sessions of HVPT within a period of 3 weeks. The other half served as control who did not receive the formal training. Two classical CP tasks on a tonal continuum from Mandarin tone 1 (high-flat in pitch) to tone 2 (mid-rising in pitch) with fixed acoustic features of duration and intensity were administered before (pretest), immediately after (posttest), and 10 weeks posttraining termination (follow-up test). Participants were instructed to either label a speech stimulus along the continuum (i.e., identification task) or determine whether a pair of stimuli separated by zero or two steps from the continuum was the same or different (i.e., discrimination task). Identification function measures (i.e., boundary position and boundary width) and discrimination function scores (i.e., between-category score, within-category score, and peakedness score) were assessed for each child participant across the three test sessions. Linear mixed-effects (LME) models showed significant training-induced enhancement in lexical tone categorization with significantly narrower boundary width and better between-category discrimination in the immediate posttest over pretest for the trainees. Furthermore, training-induced gains were reliably retained in the follow-up test 10 weeks after training. By contrast, no significant changes were found in the control group across sessions. Regression analysis confirmed that baseline performance (i.e., boundary width in the pretest session) and duration of CI use were significant predictors for the magnitude of training-induced benefits. The stringent CP tests with synthesized stimuli that excluded acoustic cues other than the pitch contour and were never used in training showed strong evidence for the efficacy of HVPT in yielding immediate and sustained improvement in lexical tone categorization for Mandarin-speaking children with CIs. The training results and individual differences have remarkable implications for developing personalized computer-based short-term HVPT protocols that may have sustainable long-term benefits for aural rehabilitation in this clinical population.

Long-lag identity priming in the absence of long-lag morphological priming: evidence from Mandarin tone alternation

The present study tested whether listeners hearing one form of a morpheme activate other forms of the same morpheme. Listeners performed lexical decisions while hearing Mandarin monosyllables; crucially, critical targets could be primed by related syllables that occurred 18–52 trials earlier (long-lag priming). The use of long-lag priming ensures that any facilitation effects are due to morphological relatedness and not to semantic or form relationships, which do not prime lexical decisions at long lags. Across three experiments (total N = 458), we consistently found that lexical decisions were primed when the same pronunciation of a morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiL – shiL) but were not primed when two different variants of the same morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiR – shiL, where both of these syllables are potential pronunciations of the same morpheme). In other words, we observed identity priming but not morphological priming, unlike other long-lag priming experiments, which almost invariably observe intramodal morphological priming if they test it. This surprising finding suggests that there are boundary conditions on the elicitation of long-lag morphological priming effects.

Mastery of Mandarin Tone Sandhi by UiTM Introductory Mandarin Learners

Tone is a distinct Chinese feature that is both difficult and important in Mandarin, with Tone Sandhi being the most difficult. Mastering tone sandhi is synonymous with mastering Mandarin. Knowing the learning situation among students is essential for assisting them in mastering the language more effectively. The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the tone sandhi mastery situation among Mandarin learners at UiTM, with the hope of improving the quality and effectiveness of Mandarin teaching and learning by implementing appropriate teaching methods. 49 Mandarin students from 3 different levels of Introductory Mandarin courses in UiTM participated in this quantitative tone sandhi study. A structured questionnaire involved demographic sections, theoretical sections, and reading recording section was distributed. The data revealed that students' theoretical knowledge is adequate, but their ability in practical pronunciation needs to be improved. Several teaching methods were listed, with the hope that they will aid in the teacher's teaching and, in turn, improve students' tone sandhi pronunciation ability.

Implicit Association Test (IAT) Studies Investigating Pitch-Shape Audiovisual Cross-modal Associations Across Language Groups.

Previous studies have shown that Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers exhibit different patterns of cross-modal congruence for the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese, depending on which features of the pitch they attend to. But is this pattern of language-specific listening a conscious cultural strategy or an automatic processing effect? If automatic, does it also apply when the same pitch contours no longer sound like speech? Implicit Association Tests (IATs) provide an indirect measure of cross-modal association. In a series of IAT studies, conducted with participants with three kinds of language backgrounds (Chinese-dominant bilinguals, Chinese balanced bilinguals, and English speakers with no Chinese experience) we find language-specific congruence effects for Mandarin lexical tones but not for matched sine-wave stimuli. That is, for linguistic stimuli, non-Chinese speakers show advantages for pitch-height congruence (high-pointy, low-curvy); no congruence effects were found for Chinese speakers. For non-linguistic stimuli, all participant groups showed advantages for pitch-height congruence. The present findings suggest that non-lexical tone congruence (high-pointy, low-curvy) is a basic congruence pattern, and the acquisition of a language with lexical tone can alter this perception.

Pre-attentive fundamental frequency processing in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants as revealed by the peak latency of positive mismatch response.

Fundamental frequency (F0) serves as the primary acoustic cue for Mandarin tone perception. Recent behavioral studies suggest that F0 information may be differently processed between Mandarin-speaking normal-hearing (NH) children and children with cochlear implants (CIs), which may partially explain the unsatisfactory outcome of lexical tone recognition using CIs with tonal language-oriented speech processing strategies. The aim of the current study was to provide neural evidence of F0 processing in Mandarin-speaking kindergarten-aged children with CIs compared with NH children. Positive mismatch responses (p-MMRs) to the change of the two acoustic dimensions of F0 (F0 contour and F0 level) in Mandarin-speaking kindergarten-aged children with CIs (n = 19) and their age-matched NH peers (n = 21). The two groups of children did not show any significant difference on the mean amplitude of p-MMR to either F0 contour or F0 level change. While the CI group exhibited a significantly shorter peak latency of p-MMR to F0 contour change than to F0 level change, an opposite pattern was observed in the NH group. This study revealed a higher sensitivity to F0 contour change than to F0 level change in children with CIs, which was different from that in NH children. The neural evidence of discrepant F0 processing between children with CIs and NH children in this study was consistent with the previously reported behavioral findings and may serve as a reference for the development and improvement of tonal language-oriented speech processing strategies.

Categorical perception of lexical tones in Chinese people with post-stroke aphasia

ABSTRACT This study used the categorical perception (CP) paradigm, a fine-grained perceptual method, to investigate the perceptual performance of lexical tones in Chinese people with post-stroke aphasia (PWA). Twenty patients with post-stroke aphasia (10 Broca’s and 10 Wernicke’s) and ten neurologically intact age-matched control participants were recruited to complete both identification and discrimination tasks of the Mandarin Tone 1–2 continuum. In addition, all participants completed tests on their auditory comprehension ability and working memory. The results showed that both Broca’s and Wernicke’s patients exhibited reduced sensitivity to within-category and between-category information but preserved CP of lexical tones. The degree of CP of lexical tones related to working memory in aphasic patients. Furthermore, lower-level acoustic processing underpinned higher-level phonological processing on the CP of lexical tones since both patient groups’ unbalanced pitch processing ability extended to their CP of lexical tones. These findings are significant for researchers and clinicians in speech-language rehabilitation, clinical psychology, and cognitive communication.

Cricothyroid Dysfunction in Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis Females Impairs Lexical Tone Production.

In this cross-sectional study, we compared voice tone and activities relating to the laryngeal muscle between unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) patients with and without cricothyroid (CT) muscle dysfunction to define how CT dysfunction affects language tone. Eighty-eight female surgery-related UVFP patients were recruited and received acoustic voice analysis and laryngeal electromyography (LEMG) when the patient was producing the four Mandarin tones. The statistical analysis was compared between UVFP patients with (CT+ group, 17 patients) and without CT muscle (CT- group, 71 patients) involvement. When producing Mandarin Tone 2, the voice tone in the CT+ group had smaller rise range (p = 0.007), lower rise rate (p = 0.002), and lower fundamental frequency (F0) at the offset point of the voice (p = 0.023). When producing Mandarin Tone 4, the voice tone in the CT+ group had smaller drop range (p = 0.019), lower drop rate (p = 0.005), and lower F0 at voice onset (p = 0.025). The CT+ group had significantly lower CT muscle activity when producing the four Mandarin tones. In conclusion, CT dysfunction causes a limitation of high-rising tone in Tone 2 and high-falling tone in Tone 4, a property that dramatically limits the tonal characteristics in Mandarin, a tonal language. This limitation could further impair the patient's communication ability.

Visual-Auditory Integration and High-Variability Speech Can Facilitate Mandarin Chinese Tone Identification.

Previous studies have demonstrated that tone identification can be facilitated when auditory tones are integrated with visual information that depicts the pitch contours of the auditory tones (hereafter, visual effect). This study investigates this visual effect in combined visual-auditory integration with high- and low-variability speech and examines whether one's prior tonal-language learning experience shapes the strength of this visual effect. Thirty Mandarin-naïve listeners, 25 Mandarin second language learners, and 30 native Mandarin listeners participated in a tone identification task in which participants judged whether an auditory tone was rising or falling in pitch. Moving arrows depicted the pitch contours of the auditory tones. A priming paradigm was used with the target auditory tones primed by four multimodal conditions: no stimuli (A-V-), visual-only stimuli (A-V+), auditory-only stimuli (A+V-), and both auditory and visual stimuli (A+V+). For Mandarin naïve listeners, the visual effect in accuracy produced under the cross-modal integration (A+V+ vs. A+V-) was superior to a unimodal approach (A-V+ vs. A-V-), as evidenced by a higher d prime of A+V+ as opposed to A+V-. However, this was not the case in response time. Additionally, the visual effect in accuracy and response time under the unimodal approach only occurred for high-variability speech, not for low-variability speech. Across the three groups of listeners, we found that the less tonal-language learning experience one had, the stronger the visual effect. Our study revealed the visual-auditory advantage and disadvantage of the visual effect and the joint contribution of visual-auditory integration and high-variability speech on facilitating tone perception via the process of speech symbolization and categorization. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21357729.

Audiovisual Mandarin Lexical Tone Perception in Quiet and Noisy Contexts: The Influence of Visual Cues and Speech Rate.

Armed with the theory of embodied cognition proposing tight interactions between perception, motor, and cognition, this study aimed to test the hypothesis that speech rate-altered Mandarin lexical tone perception in quiet and noisy environments could be affected by the bodily dynamic cross-modal information. Fifty-three adult listeners completed a Mandarin tone perception task with 720 tone stimuli in auditory-only (AO), auditory-facial (AF), and auditory-facial-plus-gestural (AFG) modalities, at fast, normal, and slow speech rates under quiet and noisy conditions. In AF and AFG modalities, both congruent and incongruent audiovisual information were designed and presented. Generalized linear mixed-effects models were constructed to analyze the accuracy of tone perception across different conditions. In Mandarin tone perception, the magnitude of enhancement of AF and AFG cues across three speech rates was significantly higher than that of the AO cue in the adverse context of noise, yet additional metaphoric gestures did not show significant differences from the facial information. Furthermore, the performance of auditory tone perception at the fast speech rate was significantly better than that at the normal speech rate when the inputs were incongruent between auditory and visual channels in quiet. This study provided compelling evidence showing that integrated audiovisual information plays a vital role not only in improving lexical tone perception in noise but also in modulating the effects of speech rate on Mandarin tone perception in quiet for native listeners. Our findings, supporting the theory of embodied cognition, are implicational for speech and hearing rehabilitation among both young and old clinical populations.

Cochlear-implant Mandarin tone recognition with a disyllabic word corpus.

Despite pitch being considered the primary cue for discriminating lexical tones, there are secondary cues such as loudness contour and duration, which may allow some cochlear implant (CI) tone discrimination even with severely degraded pitch cues. To isolate pitch cues from other cues, we developed a new disyllabic word stimulus set (Di) whose primary (pitch) and secondary (loudness) cue varied independently. This Di set consists of 270 disyllabic words, each having a distinct meaning depending on the perceived tone. Thus, listeners who hear the primary pitch cue clearly may hear a different meaning from listeners who struggle with the pitch cue and must rely on the secondary loudness contour. A lexical tone recognition experiment was conducted, which compared Di with a monosyllabic set of natural recordings. Seventeen CI users and eight normal-hearing (NH) listeners took part in the experiment. Results showed that CI users had poorer pitch cues encoding and their tone recognition performance was significantly influenced by the "missing" or "confusing" secondary cues with the Di corpus. The pitch-contour-based tone recognition is still far from satisfactory for CI users compared to NH listeners, even if some appear to integrate multiple cues to achieve high scores. This disyllabic corpus could be used to examine the performance of pitch recognition of CI users and the effectiveness of pitch cue enhancement based Mandarin tone enhancement strategies. The Di corpus is freely available online: https://github.com/BetterCI/DiTone.