Tonal Coarticulation Research Articles

Perception of Mandarin tones across different phonological contexts by native and tone-naive listeners

Coarticulation is a type of speech variation where sounds take on phonetic properties of adjacent sounds. Listeners generally display perceptual compensation, attributing coarticulatory variation to its source. Mandarin Chinese lexical tones are coarticulated based on surrounding tones. We tested how L1-Mandarin and naive listeners compensate for tonal coarticulation using a paired discrimination task. L1 listeners showed greater perceptual sensitivity to tonal differences than tone-naive listeners. Yet, both L1 and tone-naive listeners showed differences in sensitivity to differently-coarticulated versions of the rising tone presented in the same tonal context. In different tonal contexts, both groups showed similar patterns of perceptual compensation for tonal coarticulation. Thus, although L1 and naive Mandarin listeners show different sensitivities to tonal variation, they display similar compensatory patterns for tonal coarticulation.

The role of coarticulatory tonal information in Cantonese spoken word recognition: an eye-tracking study

Abstract Previous eye-tracking studies suggest listeners closely track coarticulatory segmental information to facilitate spoken word recognition. In tonal languages such as Cantonese, the F0 value of high-level and rising tones is higher when preceding a low tone than preceding a high tone. Given the tonal coarticulation effect in Cantonese, this study used a printed-word version of the visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to investigate Macau Cantonese listeners’ real-time processing of coarticulatory information through two types of word pairings, in which target words and competitor words are either matched or mismatched in coarticulatory pattern (i.e., preceding a low or high tone). The results of the growth curve analysis on the difference between target and competitor fixations show that a fixation advantage of target words increases more quickly over time in the mismatch condition than in the match condition. The overall findings suggest that native listeners closely attend to the coarticulatory tonal information to facilitate lexical activation during moment-by-moment processing. Since the mechanisms of the coarticulatory effect may differ between segments and lexical tones, this research calls for further eye-tracking studies that manipulate coarticulation cues in segmental and suprasegmental domains.

Revisiting the nature and the context of T4 alternations: insights from disyllabic, trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic word/digit productions in Taiwan Mandarin.

The tone values of a Tone 4 (T4) syllable are conventionally assumed to change from '51' to '53' when the syllable is followed by another T4 syllable in Mandarin Chinese. Literature focusing on T4 alternation is still inconclusive regarding the contexts for the alternations and whether the phenomenon should be better categorized as tone sandhi (i.e.,represented as an abstract phonological rule in mental grammar) or tonal coarticulation (i.e.,a natural articulation phenomenon at the phonetic level). The current study probes into these issues by focusing on disyllabic pseudowords, right-branching trisyllabic words as well as unstructured trisyllabic and quadrisyllabic digits. Productions from a total of 148 participants were collected and fundamental frequency (f0) contours, vowel lengths and f0 slopes were included in the analysis. The results from the experiments supported the tonal coarticulation view and showed that the trigger for the alternations was the high-onset tones following T4. Implications to the phonological analysis on tonal alternations in Mandarin Chinese are discussed.

On the nature of Tone 4 alternation in Taiwan Mandarin: Insights from acoustic analysis of trisyllabic right-branching word productions

Tone 4 (T4) alternations refer to the phenomenon where the tone values of a T4 syllable reduces from ‘51' to ‘53' when it is followed by another T4 syllable in Mandarin Chinese. It is inconclusive if the nature of T4 alternations is tone sandhi (an abstract phonological rule) (Chao, 1948; Jang, 2021) or tonal coarticulation (an articulatory phenomenon in speech production) (Lin, 20007; Shen, 1990). The current study invited 30 Taiwan Mandarin speakers to produce 10 pairs of right-branching trisyllabic words, including sequences of [T4[T4-T4]] (e.g., dà diàn shì 'big television') and [T4[T4-Tone1]] syllables (e.g., dà diàn jiā ‘big store'). The T4 sandhi view predicted that the surface tone values of the first syllables in these two sequences would differ (“51i” vs. “53”), while the T4 coarticulation view predicted that the tone values would be the same (“53”). Results from the acoustic analysis on fundamental frequency (f0) contour, f0 slope and vowel length of the first T4 syllables indicated that the differences were not statistically significant. These results supported the tonal coarticulation view. Discussions pertaining to the mental grammar for the tone value distances of two adjacent T4 syllables and the typology of tonal coarticulation in Mandarin Chinese are formulated.

A preliminary study on the online processing of anticipatory tonal coarticulation - Evidence from eye movements.

While the f0 realization of lexical tones vary extensively in contexts, little has been known on how listeners process the variation in lexical tones due to contextual effects such as tonal coarticulation in spoken word recognition. This study thus aims to fill the knowledge gap in tone perception with evidence from two types of anticipatory tonal coarticulation effects in Tianjin Mandarin, i.e., the slope raising effect due to a following low-falling tone and the overall-height raising effect due to a following low-dipping tone. An eye-tracking experiment with the Visual World Paradigm was carried out to compare participants' eye movements when they heard targets in three types of anticipatory raising conditions, i.e., the Slope Raising condition, the Overall-height Raising condition, as well as the No Raising condition (the baseline). The eye movement results showed significant differences in the proportion of looks to target between the Slope Raising condition versus the other two conditions, whereas the Overall-height Raising condition did not differ significantly from the No Raising condition. The findings thus suggest the facilitatory effect of tonal coarticulation cues in the anticipation of the upcoming tones, but listeners in this study seemed to be only sensitive to the raising in the f0 slope rather than the overall raising in the f0 height.

The effect of phrasing, speech rate, and information structure on tonal coarticulation in spontaneous Cantonese

Pre-low raising is a tone coarticulation phenomenon in which the pitch of a high-tone syllable is higher before a low tone than before a high tone. Lee and Xu (2016) found that speech rate influences the degree of this pre-low raising, in recordings of read disyllables in carrier phrases. In the present study, we examine this phenomenon in spontaneous Hong Kong Cantonese using the CantoMap Map Task dataset (Winterstein et al., 2020), also exploring the possibility of similar effects on the realization of other tones. Along with speech rate, we also consider the possible effects on thistonal dissimilation of phrasing (relations between a syllable and the subsequent syllable), the relative location of a syllable in a sentence, and information structure (the role of the word in the map task interaction). We expect that all of these factors will influence tonal coarticulation in general, and pre-low raising in particular.

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

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.

Dissimilatory interactions among lexical tones are mediated by speech rate: Evidence from Thai

The pitch targets of lexical tones in adjacent syllables exhibit interactions that are reminiscent of the coarticulatory effects typical of segments (Gandour, 1994; Xu, 1994). However, unlike segmental coarticulation, which is primarily assimilatory, lexical tones also exhibit dissimilatory interactions. For instance, tones with a high pitch target have been reported to reach even higher targets before a dissimilar low tone than before a similar high tone; a phenomenon known as pre-low raising (Lee et al., 2021). Our contribution focuses on two aspects of tonal coarticulation: the existence of dissimilatory pre-high lowering effects, and the role of speech ratein coarticulatory effects. A production experiment was conducted with 20 speakers of Bangkok Thai, who produced disyllabic combinations of Falling/Rising tones before all the five tones of the language (Mid/Low/Falling/High/Rising) in carrier sentences at a variety of speech rates. Results show the existence of both pre-low raising and pre-high lowering dissimilatory effects in Bangkok Thai. Further, the dissimilatory effects are weaker at higher speech rates. The interaction between speech rate and the strength of dissimilatory effects suggests that tonal dissimilation may be primarily driven by articulatory target planning mechanisms rather than perceptual enhancement (Lee et al., 2021).

The use of tonal coarticulation in segmentation of artificial language speech: A study with Mandarin listeners

AbstractTonal carryover assimilation, whereby a tone is assimilated to the preceding one, is conditioned by prosodic boundaries in a way suggesting that its presence may signal continuity or lack of a boundary. Its possibility as a speech segmentation cue was investigated in two artificial language (AL) learning experiments. Mandarin-speaking listeners identified the “words” of a three-tone AL (e.g., [pé.tī.kù]) after listening to six long speech streams in which the words were repeated continuously without pauses. The first experiment revealed that segmentation was disrupted in an “incongruent-cues” condition where tonal carryover assimilation occurred across AL word boundaries and conflicted with statistical regularities in the speech streams. Segmentation was neither facilitated nor inhibited in a “congruent-cues” condition where tonal carryover assimilation occurred only within the AL words in 27% of the repetitions and never across word boundaries. A null effect was again found for the congruent-cues condition of the second experiment, where all AL word repetitions carried tonal carryover assimilation. These findings show that tonal carryover assimilation is exploited to resolve segmentation problems when cues conflict. Its null effect in the congruent-cues conditions might be linked to cue redundancy and suggest that it is weighted low in the segmentation cue hierarchy.

Boundary-conditioned anticipatory tonal coarticulation in Standard Mandarin

The goal of this study is to examine (1) whether and how the F0 contour of a sequence of neutral tones in Standard Mandarin is affected by the following full tone due to anticipatory tonal coarticulation, (2) whether and how the degree of anticipatory tonal coarticulation varies as a function of the strength of an intervening boundary, and (3) whether boundary-conditioned anticipatory tonal coarticulatory variations can be accounted for by boundary-induced durational changes. By using generalized additive mixed models to analyze time-varying F0 contours of neutral-tone sequence, we are able to formally detect anticipatory tonal coarticulation effects across different boundary conditions while simultaneously taking into account individual variations of 20 speakers. Results show that (a) F0 contours of neutral-tone sequence can be affected by both assimilatory and dissimilatory anticipatory effects and anticipation could spread to non-adjacent neutral tones, that (b) anticipatory tonal coarticulation becomes weaker when crossing a strong boundary than when crossing a weak boundary, and that (c) boundary-induced anticipatory tonal coarticulation reduction cannot be simply accounted for by boundary-induced lengthening effect. Based on the results, we argue that the anticipatory tonal coarticulation patterns reported in this study are more consistent with the soft template mark-up language (Stem-ML) model than with the parallel encoding and target approximation (PENTA) model, and that boundary-induced anticipatory tonal coarticulation reduction is primarily the result of active speech planning.

Coarticulation effects of contour tones in second language Chinese

AbstractThis study tests for evidence of tonal coarticulation effects, especially anticipatory effects, in production of non-native Chinese contour tones. Eighty second language learners of Chinese and ten native speakers participated in a main experiment and two supplementary experiments in which they produced both real and pseudo disyllabic words. Findings indicate that anticipatory coarticulation is relevant in L2 contour tone production. L2 speakers’ Tone 2 and to some extent Tone 4 tend to be less intelligible to native listeners when followed by tones starting with a high onset (Tone 1 or Tone 4) due to anticipatory coarticulation. Some similar and different tonal coarticulation effects between native Chinese speakers and second language learners of Chinese are also noted in the paper based on the experiment results. This study argues that a ‘universal’ coarticulatory constraint plays a role in shaping second language Chinese tone phonology.

Didn't hear that coming: Effects of withholding phonetic cues to code-switching

AbstractCode-switching has been found to incur a processing cost in auditory comprehension. However, listeners may have access to anticipatory phonetic cues to code-switches (Piccinini & Garellek, 2014; Fricke et al., 2016), thus mitigating switch cost. We investigated effects of withholding anticipatory phonetic cues on code-switched word recognition by splicing English-to-Mandarin code-switches into unilingual English sentences. In a concept monitoring experiment, Mandarin–English bilinguals took longer to recognize code-switches, suggesting a switch cost. In an eye tracking experiment, the average proportion of all participants' looks to pictures corresponding to sentence-medial code-switches decreased when cues were withheld. Acoustic analysis of stimuli revealed tone-specific pitch contours before English-to-Mandarin code-switches, consistent with previous work on tonal coarticulation. We conclude that withholding anticipatory phonetic cues can negatively affect code-switched recognition: therefore, bilingual listeners use phonetic cues in processing code-switches under normal conditions. We discuss the implications of tonal coarticulation for mechanisms underlying phonetic cues to code-switching.

Voice quality of coarticulated Mandarin tones

Tonal coarticulation often induces changes in F0 (Xu, 1997; Brunelle, 2009) as well as voice quality (DiCanio, 2012). In Mandarin, voice quality covaries with F0, such that when the F0 is higher or lower than the mid-range pitch, the voice quality often becomes creakier (Kuang, 2017). However, fewer studies have examined how coarticulation can affect a tone’s voice quality. Using audio and electroglottography (EGG), this study investigates how F0 and voice quality of Mandarin tones are affected by coarticulation. The stimuli consisted of trisyllabic Mandarin compounds, where each of the four Mandarin tones is flanked by varying tones, for a full range of contextual variation. We expect that the F0 of a high tone (e.g., Tone 1) would become lower when flanked by a low tone (e.g., Tone 3), whereas the F0 of a low tone would become higher when adjacent to a high tone. Moreover, the voice quality of Tone 3 that is raised in F0 should become more modal, if voice quality depends on F0. Discussion of results will emphasize how F0 and voice quality of Mandarin tones can vary according to tonal context and how articulation (as measured by EGG) informs patterns of acoustic realization.

Tonal coarticulation in Mandarin-English code-switching

Author(s): Shen, Alice | Abstract: Question: How is tonal coarticulation affected by code-switching?

An acoustic study of contextual tonal variation in Tianjin Mandarin

The f0 realization of lexical tones is known to vary greatly due to contextual tonal variation processes such as tone sandhi and tonal coarticulation. This study set out to investigate the f0 variability induced by these two different sources with well-controlled acoustic data from Tianjin Mandarin. Tianjin Mandarin is known for its complex patterns of tonal variation over disyllabic constituents, as well as for the conflicting directionality of sandhi alternations and possible iterative application of disyllabic sandhi rules over trisyllabic constituents. Previous studies on Tianjin tone sandhi have often been based on impressionistic descriptions of speech produced by speakers of older generations. In this study, we investigated the f0 realization of disyllabic and trisyllabic tonal sequences in Tianjin Mandarin produced by younger speakers (born in the 1980s). Through examining f0 variation of lexical tones as a function of different following tones, we observed an interesting anticipatory raising effect of the lexical low-falling tone (T1). Furthermore, we confirmed three tonal sequences with tone sandhi changes: (1) two low-falling tones (T1T1), (2) a high-falling tone followed by a low-falling tone (T4T1), and (3) two low-dipping tones (T3T3). These disyllabic tone sandhi patterns, however, were not consistently observed within trisyllabic sequences, as claimed in the literature. Specifically, while T3T3 showed sandhi application regardless of its position within a trisyllabic sequence, T1T1 and T4T1 sequences showed sandhi changes only when they were right aligned. Last but not least, no tonal neutralization was observed over any of the sandhi processes. Rather, we argue that T3T3 is a near-merger sandhi case, while T1T1 and T4T1 can be classified as no-merger sandhi sequences.

Neural correlates of individual differences in processing of rising tones in Cantonese: Implications for speech perception and production

Neural correlates of individual differences in processing of rising tones in Cantonese: Implications for speech perception and production

PHONETIC INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH AND FRENCH LISTENERS’ ASSIMILATION OF MANDARIN TONES TO NATIVE PROSODIC CATEGORIES

This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according to their native sentence intonation categories (i-Categories) in connected speech. Results showed that both English and French speakers categorized Mandarin tones primarily on the phonetic similarities of the pitch contours between the Mandarin tones and their native i-Categories. Moreover, French but not English speakers were able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic differences between Tone 3 (T3) and Tone 4 (T4; i.e., low or low-falling tone vs. high-falling tone), which suggests that the stress differences between these languages may affect nonnative tone perception: English uses lexical stress, whereas French does not. In the discrimination task, the French listeners’ performance was better than that of the English listeners. For each group, discrimination of the Tone 1 (T1)–T4 and Tone 2 (T2)–T3 pairs was consistently and significantly lower than that of the other tone pairs, and the difference between T1-T4 and T2-T3 was significant. Discrimination of the Mandarin tone pairs was not fully predicted by pairwise categorizations to native i-Categories, however. Some discrimination differences were observed among tone pairs showing the same assimilation patterns. Phonetic overlaps in native i-Category choices for the Mandarin tones, strength of categorization (So, 2012), and tonal coarticulation effects (Xu, 1994, 1997) may offer possible accounts of these discrepancies between categorization and discrimination performance. These findings support the perceptual assimilation model for suprasegmentals (So & Best, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013), extended to categorization of nonnative tone words within sentence contexts to native i-Categories.

Articulatory parameterization in Trique tone production: Distinguishing co-production from coarticulation

The production of a tone in a tonal language is typically influenced by adjacent tonal targets. Within the literature, all such influences on F0 are considered part of tonal coarticulation. Yet, conflating all these effects under coarticulation results in an assortment of different processes within a tone language which lack a common motivating principle. In this talk, we present tone production data from Itunyoso Trique (Oto-Manguean). The data consists of 5 repetitions of 24 sentences spoken at two speech rates (fast/normal) by 8 native speakers. The medial target word was one of four tones (/45/,/4/,/32/,/2/), while the adjacent words were one of six tones (/45/,/43/,/32/,/3/,/2/,/1/). F0 data was extracted and time-normalized. Two patterns were observed. First, adjacent tones influenced F0 at the onset and offset of target tones. Second, global changes in F0 contour occurred for certain tones. All such effects were stronger during fast speech rate. We argue that these effects, often grouped together...

The effect of segmental makeup on Mandarin tone coarticulation

The effect of segmental make-ups on tonal coarticulation was investigated in Mandarin. Target syllables differ in coda (no coda, alveolar nasal or velar nasal) and initial sonorancy (obstruent or sonorant) were embedded in trisyllabic non-words templates, in the form of trisyllabic names. Twenty native speakers were recorded and the F0 contours of all syllables were measured at a 10-ms time step. The coarticulation effect of four Mandarin tones are examined in three different positions with 4 (initial position), 16 (medial position), and 4 (final position) tonal contexts. Moreover, the phonetic variations of each tone in different prosodic positions were examined. The preliminary results indicate that the coarticulation effect is less prominent when intervened by obstruents whereas nasal codas amplify the effect. The realization of this modulating effect on the directionality of tonal coarticulation (carryover and anticipatory) will be discussed. The magnitude of coarticulation in compatible (adjacent tones have similar registers) and conflicting (adjacent tones with large register difference) environments will also be compared.

Tonal coarticulation in Malaysian Hokkien: A typological anomaly?

Tonal coarticulation in Malaysian Hokkien: A typological anomaly?