Mandarin Tone Production Research Articles

Orthographic effects on the perception and production of L2 mandarin tones

Recent studies on orthographic effects on L2 phonology have typically investigated alphabetic writing systems and segmental contrasts with novice learners. The current study extends such investigation to compare orthographic effects of an opaque logographic system (Chinese characters) and a transparent schematic system (pinyin) on a suprasegmental feature (lexical tones) with experienced learners. A perception experiment of Mandarin tones by Cantonese L2 learners shows that pinyin was more beneficial for tone perception in monosyllabic words, while tones were better perceived in characters for disyllabic words. A production experiment reveals a similar pattern. Additionally, low performance learners were affected by orthographic differences more than high performance learners. The findings suggest that orthographic effects are not limited to alphabetic systems, and are dependent on task nature and learner proficiency. A transparent system may not always be easier than an opaque system.

Adaptation in Mandarin tone production with pitch-shifted auditory feedback: influence of tonal contrast requirements

ABSTRACTWe investigated Mandarin speakers’ control of lexical tone production with F0-perturbed auditory feedback. Subjects produced high level (T1), mid rising (T2), low dipping (T3), and high falling (T4) tones in conditions with (a) no perturbation, (b) T1 shifted down, (c) T1 shifted down and T3 shifted up, or (d) T1 shifted down and T3 shifted up but without producing other tones. Speakers and new subjects also completed a tone identification task with unaltered and F0-perturbed productions. With only T1 perturbed down, speakers adapted by raising F0 relative to no-perturbation. With simultaneous T1 down and T3 up perturbations, no T1 adaptation occurred, and T3 adaptation occurred only if T2 was also produced. Identification accuracy with stimuli representing adapted productions was comparable to baseline, but with simulated non-adapted productions it was reduced for T2 and T3. Thus, Mandarin speakers’ adaptation to F0 perturbations is linguistically constrained and serves to maintain tone contrast.

Contextual effect in second language perception and production of Mandarin tones

A robust contextual effect is well documented in native tone perception and production but less well studied in non-native speech. The current study examined English-speaking learners’ Mandarin tone perception and production with varying preceding and following tones. Fifteen intermediate-level learners performed an Identification and a Reading task with disyllabic stimuli encompassing various tone combinations. The results revealed that the learners’ accuracy rates and error patterns varied in the initial and final position as well as in different tonal environments. For example, the learners predominantly misidentified T3 as T4 in the initial position when the following tone was T1, but rarely made such an error in the final position. In the Reading task, on the other hand, the learners frequently misproduced T3 as T2 in the final position, but often misproduced T2 as T3 in the initial position, especially when the following tone was T1. The learners’ overall accuracy and error rates in Identification correlated with those in Reading, indicating comparable tone perception and production abilities. However, there were some significant differences between perception and production with regard to T3. These findings suggest that the prosodic position and surrounding tones both have a significant effect on the learners’ performance with L2 tones, and that the effect differs in perception and production.

Phonetic complexity affects children's Mandarin tone production accuracy in disyllabic words: A perceptual study.

This is the first study to examine the effect of phonetic contexts on children’s lexical tone production. Mandarin tones in disyllabic words produced by forty-four 2- to 6-year-old children and twelve mothers were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Native Mandarin-speaking adults categorized the tones based on the pitch information in the filtered stimuli. All mothers’ tones were categorized with ceiling accuracy. Counter to the findings in most previous studies on children’s tone acquisition and the prevailing assumption in models of speech development that children acquire suprasegmental features much earlier than segmental features, this study found that children as old as six years of age have not mastered the production of Mandarin tones. Children’s tones were judged with significantly lower accuracy than mothers’ productions. Tone accuracy improved, while cross subject variability in tone accuracy decreased, with age. Children’s tone accuracy was affected by the articulatory complexity of phonetic contexts. Children made more errors in tone combinations with more complex fundamental frequency (F0) contours than tone sequences with simpler F0 changes. When producing disyllabic tone sequences with complex F0 contours, children tended to shift the F0 contour of the first tone to reduce the F0 change, resulting in more tone errors in the first syllable than in the second syllable and showing substantially more anticipatory coarticulation than adults. The results provide further evidence that acquisition of lexical tones is a protracted process in children. Tones produced accurately by children in one phonetic context may not be produced correctly in another phonetic context. Children demonstrate more anticipatory coarticulation in their disyllabic productions than adults, which may be attributed to children’s immature speech motor control in tone production, and is presumably a by-product of their inability to accomplish complex F0 changes within the syllable time-frame.

Effects of different teaching methods on the production of Mandarin tone 3 by English speaking learners

This study compared the effectiveness of two teaching methods on the production of Mandarin Tone 3 by English-speaking students. The control group (n=12) received pitch direction-focused instruction in which Tone 3 was introduced as a falling-rising contour tone while the experimental group (n=12) received pitch height-focused instruction in which Tone 3 was introduced as a low level tone. The ability to produce this tone in monosyllabic words, disyllabic words and sentences was assessed after 1 month, 2 months, and 3 months of instruction. The results showed that the pitch height-focused teaching method improved Tone 3 production in connected tonal environments at the sentence level, whereas the pitch direction-focused teaching method was more effective in training students to produce this tone in isolation. More importantly, unlike the pitch direction-focused method, the effectiveness of the pitch height-focused teaching method generalized to new words. It helped L2 learners to develop a self-learning skill for pronouncing unfamiliar words.

A limited role of hand gestures and head nods in native English speakers’ production of Mandarin tones

Theories of embodied cognition have emphasized the importance of the whole body in human communication (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), and numerous empirical studies have shown that bodily actions affect multiple aspects of speech production and perception. This study examined the roles that hand and head gestures play in production of Mandarin tones by native English speakers. Twenty-four native English speakers were asked to imitate the four Mandarin tones from a model across three conditions: (1) audio-only, (2) audio and hand gestures, and (3) audio and head nods. For (2) and (3), participants watched videos in which a native Mandarin speaker visually depicted the tones with her hand and head, respectively. The participants’ production was then presented to seven native Mandarin listeners in an identification test to determine percent correctly produced. A 3 (conditions) x 4 (tones) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of tone (1 > 3, 4 > 2) but no main effect or interaction of condition, indicating that hand and head gestures did not help learners accurately produce Mandarin tones. The results corroborate earlier acoustic analysis of the production data, confirming a limited role of hand and head gestures in phonetic and phonological aspects of L2 learning.

YANG, BEI. Perception and Production of Mandarin Tones by Native Speakers and L2 Learners. New York/Heidelberg: Springer, 2015. Pp. 162. $129.00, cloth. ISBN 978–3–66244–644–7, cloth; 978–3–66244–645–4, e‐Book.

YANG, BEI. Perception and Production of Mandarin Tones by Native Speakers and L2 Learners. New York/Heidelberg: Springer, 2015. Pp. 162. $129.00, cloth. ISBN 978–3–66244–644–7, cloth; 978–3–66244–645–4, e‐Book.

A study of laryngeal gestures in Mandarin citation tones using simultaneous laryngoscopy and laryngeal ultrasound (SLLUS)

In this work, Mandarin tone production is examined usingsimultaneous laryngoscopy and laryngeal ultrasound(SLLUS). Laryngoscopy is used to obtain information about laryngeal state, and laryngeal ultrasound is used to quantify changes in larynx height. With this methodology, several observations are made concerning the production of Mandarin tone in citation form. Two production strategies are attested for low tone production: (i) larynx lowering and (ii) larynx raising with laryngeal constriction. Another finding is that the larynx rises continually during level tone production, which is interpreted as a means to compensate for declining subglottal pressure. In general, we argue that larynx height plays a supportive role in facilitating f0 change under circumstances where intrinsic mechanisms for f0 control are insufficient to reach tonal targets due to vocal fold inertia. Activation of the laryngeal constrictor can be used to achieve low tone targets through mechanical adjustment to vocal fold dynamics. We conclude that extra-glottal laryngeal mechanisms play important roles in facilitating the production of tone targets and should be integrated into the contemporary articulatory model of tone production.

Perceptual evidence for protracted development in monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tone production in preschool children in Taiwan

This study used the same methodology in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to examine the perceived accuracy of monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 4- and 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in Taiwan and combined the findings with those of 3-year-olds reported in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to track the development of monosyllabic tone production in preschool children. Tone productions of adults and children were collected in a picture naming task and low-pass filtered to remove lexical information and reserve tone information. Five native-speakers categorized the target tones in the filtered productions. Children's tone accuracy was compared to adults' to determine mastery and developmental changes. The results showed that preschool children in Taiwan have not fully mastered the production of monosyllabic Mandarin tones. None of the tones produced by the children in the three age groups reached adult-like accuracy. Little developmental change was found in children's tone accuracy during the preschool years. A similar order of accuracy of the tones was observed across the three age groups and the order appeared to follow the order of articulatory complexity in producing the tones. The findings suggest a protracted course of development in children's acquisition of Mandarin tones and that tone development may be constrained by physiological factors.

Perception and production of Mandarin tones by English vocalists and instrumentalists

Musical training has been found to positively affect non-native lexical tone perception and production (e.g. Wong et al., 2007). While there are comprehensive studies on trained instrumental musicians, relatively little is known about formally trained vocal musicians. The present study compares English vocalists and instrumentalists to see which type of musical training is more advantageous to lexical tone perception and production. Stimuli consisted of six syllables ([thi], [li], [mi], [tho], [lo], [mo]) associated with four Mandarin tones (high-level, high-rising, low dipping, and high falling). Native Mandarin non-musicians, native English non-musicians, vocalists, and instrumentalists (n =15 per group) were tested in a same/different discrimination task and an imitation task. In the discrimination task, the English vocalists [d’ = 3.12] performed significantly better than the English non-musicians [d’ = 2.41; p = 0.04]. The vocalists also numerically outperformed the instrumentalists [d’ = 2.84], who in turn outperformed the English non-musicians. Analyses on the “different” and “same” tone-pairs showed that the vocalists are marginally more accurate than the instrumentalists for T2-T2 pair-type only [p = 0.067]. In the imitation task, the three English groups did not differ in how their productions were evaluated by the native Mandarin judges.

Acoustic differences in adult-directed and child-directed monosyllabic Mandarin tone productions

To investigate the acoustic differences in adult- and child-directed monosyllabic Mandarin tone productions, twenty-one mothers of preschool children labeled pictures that represented monosyllabic words to their children and to another adult. Their productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Five judges determined the target tones based on the filtered stimuli. Acoustic analyses were performed on the productions in which the target tones were correctly identified by four or more of the judges. Preliminary results showed no duration difference in the four tones in adult-directed and child-directed productions. Overall, all the four tones were produced at significantly higher f0s in child-directed productions than in adult-directed productions. Specifically, child-directed Tone 1 productions were produced at significantly higher f0s, and the f0 contours exhibited higher positive f0 slopes and were not as level as in adult-directed Tone 1 productions. Child-directed Tone 2 productions were produced at higher f0s, spanned at larger f0 ranges but maintained the same rising slopes as in adult-directed productions. Child-directed Tone 3 and Tone 4 productions had the same f0 shapes as in adult-directed productions but were produced at higher f0s (Work supported by NIDCD).

Three- to five-year-old children in Taiwan show little development in their production of monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tones

While a couple of studies reported that 2-year-old children in Beijing have mastered the production of Mandarin tones in various contexts, several studies found that three-year-old children learning Mandarin as a first language in the U.S. have not produced adult-like tones in monosyllabic words. This study collected monosyllabic Mandarin tone productions from 33 three- to five-year-old children growing up in Taiwan. Five judges categorized the tones of the 734 child productions and 92 productions by 4 adults via low-pass filtered words in which the segmental information was degraded while F0 information was retained. Adult tones were categorized with 93%, 96%, 82%, and 94% accuracy. Children's tones were identified with significantly lower accuracy (p<.05) at 63%, 50%, 50% and 77%, respectively. Age accounted for 0.2%, 2.4%, 4.0% and 8.2% of the variance in children's accuracy of the four tones, respectively, suggesting little developmental change. Children produced T4 more accurately than T1. T2 and T3 were significantly more difficult. These results are in line with findings in previous studies with children growing up in the U.S. using the same methodology and seem to support that tone development is related to maturation of speech motor control. [Work supported by NSF EAPSI]

Monosyllabic Mandarin Tone Productions by 3-Year-Olds Growing Up in Taiwan and in the United States: Interjudge Reliability and Perceptual Results

The author compared monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tones produced by 3-year-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in Taiwan and in the United States. Following the procedures in Wong, Schwartz, and Jenkins (2005), the author collected monosyllabic tone productions from 3-year-old Mandarin-speaking children in Taiwan and low-pass filtered them to eliminate lexical information but retain tone information. Five Mandarin-speaking adults residing in Taiwan categorized these filtered tones and those produced by the Mandarin-speaking children growing up in the United States, the latter of which was reported in Wong et al. (2005). Agreements on tone categorization by judges residing in Taiwan and in the United States were evaluated. Tone accuracy of children growing up in Taiwan and the United States were examined and compared. The Mandarin-speaking judges residing in the United States and in Taiwan showed high agreements on tone categorization. None of the 4 tones produced by the Mandarin-speaking children growing up in the United States and in Taiwan was adultlike.Children in Taiwan made more errors in Tone 2 and Tone 4 than did Mandarin-speaking children growing up in the United States. Accuracy rates of Tone 1 and Tone 3 were comparable in the 2 groups of children. Mandarin tone acquisition is a protracted process. Three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in Taiwan and the United States show similar developmental patterns and have not yet produced monosyllabic tones with adultlike accuracy.

Acoustic evidence for protracted development of monosyllabic Mandarin tone production by Taiwanese children

The current study examines the acoustic characteristics of monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 3-y-old children growing up in Taiwan. Four hundred monosyllabic tone productions were collected from 11 adults and 10 children and were judged by 5 Mandarin-speaking adults to determine tone accuracy. Seven acoustic parameters strongly associated with Mandarin tone perception were measured in these productions and compared among children's and adults correct and incorrect productions. The findings indicate that children do not produce the high level tone with fundamental frequencies (f0) as high or level as adults. Children's rising, falling, and dipping tones do not reach f0 ranges as low as adults. These results are largely consistent with the findings in our previous acoustic study on the monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 3-y-old children growing up in the U.S. Taken together, 3-y-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in the U.S. and Taiwan do not produce adult-like monosyllabic Mandarin tones. Even children's productions in which the tonal targets are correctly perceived by adults are acoustically different than the adult forms. Children demonstrate more difficulties producing low f0 targets. The findings provide acoustic evidence to support a much more protracted process for Mandarin lexical tone acquisition than most studies have suggested.

Production of Mandarin Tone by Adults and Children with Normal Hearing: Significance for Children with Cochlear Implants

Mandarin Chinese is a tone language in which pitch variations are used to change the meanings of words. This study focused on the production of the four tones of Mandarin by adults and eight-year-old children with normal hearing, who spoke Mandarin as their first language. All speakers were recorded producing the tones in the syllable [ma]. Analysis of the speakers' productions of the four tones in [ma] showed that all of the children were able to produce the appropriate tonal contrasts. Some differences between the children and adult speakers were found in the duration of the tones. These data represent a benchmark against which the speech of children with implants can be compared.

Examination of coarticulation features in Mandarin tone productions using locus equation.

Locus equation (LE) was designed to examine the spectral changes during coarticulated consonant-vowel (CV) utterances through obtaining a regression straight-line which fits to points on a 2-D Cartesian coordinate system, with the ordinate and abscissa corresponding to onset F2 and target (mid-vowel) F2, respectively [Lindblom (1963); Sussman et al. (1992)]. The linear LE functions, according to Sussman et al. (1991), were referred as potential “CV prototypes”, of which the slopes are considered to indicate the extent of coarticulation-induced variation in a CV(C) context. This study attempts to investigate coarticulation features in Mandarin speech sounds by comparing LE among different Mandarin tones. A tonal language, specifically Mandarin, where a change in tone of a syllable leads to a change in lexical meaning, will be used in the study. There are four contrastive tones in the Mandarin, each of which is realized by vocal pitch variation in vowel segment. Based on recent findings of kinetic interrelations between phonatory and articulatory systems during Mandarin tone productions [Gao and Esling (2003)], this study intends to determine if coarticulation features in Mandarin CV contexts vary with variation of lexical tones at which each of the following vowel sounds is produced.

Temporal changes in Mandarin tone due to speaking rate variation.

The present research investigates the effects of variation in speaking rate on the production of Mandarin tone. Fourteen speakers (6M, 8F) produced 15 syllables, each with the four different Mandarin tones. Speakers produced these syllables at fast, normal, and slow speaking rates in isolation. To induce rate change, the 60 target words were presented on a computer screen at different tempos. Consonant, vowel, and syllable duration were measured as well as turning point (TP) for the contour tones, Tones 2 and 3. TP is the time interval from tone onset to the lowest f0 value. Duration data of each tone revealed significant ambiguity across tones due to speaking rate. Specifically, for the contour tones, results indicated significant overlap in terms of duration and, as speaking rate increased, the TP for Tone 2 decreased to a lesser extent as compared to Tone 3. Moreover, the TP values for Tones 2 and 3 showed a sizable range, with the ambiguous region of overlap observed not at the faster but at the slower speaking rates. These findings will be discussed in terms of the temporal adjustments that occur in production when speaking rate changes. [Research supported by NSF.]

Production of disyllabic Mandarin tones by children.

Two‐ to six‐year‐old children’s productions of Mandarin lexical tones in familiar disyllabic words were examined to determine the time course of tone development and the effect of complexity of fundamental frequency contours (f0) on rate of acquisition. Disyllabic tone (DT) productions of 44 children and 12 of their mothers were elicited in a picture naming task and were low‐pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Judges categorized the DTs based on the filtered stimuli without lexical support. Adults’ and children’s DTs were categorized with 96% and 65% accuracy, respectively. Tone accuracy increased while intersubject variability decreased with age. Children as old as 6 years did not attain adultlike accuracy. Different DT combinations developed at different rates. DTs with more complex f0 contours were more difficult for children. Substitution patterns and acoustic analysis revealed that when producing tones with large transitions at the syllable boundary, children tended to modify the f0 in the first syllable to reduce the f0 shift at the boundary of the first and second syllable, resulting in more errors in the tones in the first syllable than in the second syllable. The results suggest physiological constraints on tone development. [Work supported by NIH 5F31DC8470 and NSF.]

Tone production of Mandarin Chinese speaking children with cochlear implants

The purpose of the present study was to investigate tone production performance of native Mandarin Chinese speaking children with cochlear implants and to evaluate the effects of age at implantation and duration of implant use on tone production in those children. Fourteen prelingually deaf children who had received cochlear implantation and 14 age-matched normal-hearing children participated in the study. Both groups were of native Mandarin Chinese speaking children. One hundred and sixty tone tokens were recorded from each of the children. The total of 4480 tokens (160x28) were then used in the tone perception tests in which seven normal-hearing native Mandarin Chinese speaking adults participated. The tone production of the cochlear implant children showed tremendous individual variability. The group mean performance was 48.4% correct, statistically significantly lower than the group mean performance of 78.0% correct in the normal-hearing controls. The tone confusion matrix analysis revealed that the production of Mandarin tone 2 (the rising tone) was most severely impaired in the cochlear implant children, followed by tone 3 (the low and dipping tone) and tone 4 (the falling tone). The most frequently perceived tone irrespective of the target tone was tone 1 (the high level tone). The tone production performance was negatively correlated with the age at implantation and positively correlated with the duration of implant use. There is a remarkable deficit in tone production in a majority of native tone language speaking, prelingually deaf children who have received cochlear implants. While an increased duration of implant use might facilitate tone production, the age at implantation appears to have a negative effect on tone production in cochlear implant children. Therefore, early implantation might be beneficial to tone production in prelingually deaf children whose native language is a tone language.

Production and perception of mandarin tone in adults with cerebral palsy

The primary objective of the present study was to document tone production and intelligibility deficits in Mandarin‐speaking persons with cerebral palsy (CP). Spastic, athetoid, and mixed types of CP were studied, along with a control group, to investigate the possibility of tone production and intelligibility deficits that were differentially affected by type of CP. Speakers produced a 78‐word list that included contrasts for all four Mandarin tones. Intelligibility data were obtained for these words from 26 native speakers of Mandarin, and F0 contour analyses were implemented in CSpeech (Milenkovic) for a subset of the words. Mean tone intelligibility for speakers with CP was 73%, significantly different from the 91% value for control speakers. F0 contour analysis showed that speakers with CP maintained some contrast among the F0 contours for the four tones, but with less distinction than contrasts observed for control speakers. Discussion focuses on the role of tone in a model of the dysarthria associated with CP.