Tone Production Research Articles

Dissociation between Distinctive Tone Production and Poor Tone Perception in Cantonese: Preliminary ERP Results

Dissociation between Distinctive Tone Production and Poor Tone Perception in Cantonese: Preliminary ERP Results

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).

The gap between the perception and production of tones by American learners of Mandarin – An intralingual perspective

AbstractLinguists have predominantly maintained that perception precedes production (Dinnsen 1983), an assertion also accepted by those studying second language acquisition (Flege 1995). However, an observation of acquisition of tones in Chinese as a second language suggests that American learners make different tonal mistakes in perception and production. This study explores tonal perception and production referring to the sound system of Mandarin, since a tone has a close relationship with an initial that is an onset and a final that is a rhyme within a syllable in Mandarin. The research instrument has 84 monosyllables that are representative according to the relationship among initials, finals and tones. Twenty-five American learners of Chinese in second-semester Chinese class and 11 learners of Chinese in fourth-semester Chinese class participated in this study. A two-way mixed ANOVA is the main statistical method used to analyze the acquisition data. The results reveal that tonal production is better than tonal perception. The error distribution of perception is influenced not only by tonal features, but also by initial features and final structures. For production, however, initial and final features do not influence tones. Therefore, the paper argues that tones are perceived at the phonological level and produced at the phonetic level and it takes L2 learners longer time to acquire phonological features of tones.

Changing resonator geometry to boost sound power decouples size and song frequency in a small insect

Despite their small size, some insects, such as crickets, can produce high amplitude mating songs by rubbing their wings together. By exploiting structural resonance for sound radiation, crickets broadcast species-specific songs at a sharply tuned frequency. Such songs enhance the range of signal transmission, contain information about the signaler's quality, and allow mate choice. The production of pure tones requires elaborate structural mechanisms that control and sustain resonance at the species-specific frequency. Tree crickets differ sharply from this scheme. Although they use a resonant system to produce sound, tree crickets can produce high amplitude songs at different frequencies, varying by as much as an octave. Based on an investigation of the driving mechanism and the resonant system, using laser Doppler vibrometry and finite element modeling, we show that it is the distinctive geometry of the crickets' forewings (the resonant system) that is responsible for their capacity to vary frequency. The long, enlarged wings enable the production of high amplitude songs; however, as a mechanical consequence of the high aspect ratio, the resonant structures have multiple resonant modes that are similar in frequency. The drive produced by the singing apparatus cannot, therefore, be locked to a single frequency, and different resonant modes can easily be engaged, allowing individual males to vary the carrier frequency of their songs. Such flexibility in sound production, decoupling body size and song frequency, has important implications for conventional views of mate choice, and offers inspiration for the design of miniature, multifrequency, resonant acoustic radiators.

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]

Lexical tone development in children with cochlear implants

Most of the languages in the world are tonal. In a tonal language, voice pitch variation (i.e., tone) at the syllable level is a segmental structure that conveys lexical meaning of words. Multichannel cochlear implants (CIs) have shown great success in providing profoundly-deafened individuals with satisfactory speech perception in quiet. However, contemporary speech-processing strategies used in CIs do not explicitly code pitch information. This presentation will be focused on (1) acoustic cues for recognition of lexical tones, primarily the Mandarin Chinese tones, and the relative contributions of various cues to tone recognition, (2) results of tone recognition experiments in implant recipients in relation to their differences in demographics, devices, strategies, and psychoacoustic abilities, (3) relationship between music pitch perception and lexical tone recognition, and (4) results on tone production and vocal singing in prelingually-deafened, native tonal-language speaking children with CIs. It is...

Effects of prosodic position on the production of Si-Xien Hakka tones at phrase level

This study examined the effects of prosodic position on duration and F0 of the six tones in Si-Xien Hakka. Each of the tones was placed in the initial, medial, and final positions of a three-syllable phrase/clause, which constituted the first part of a sentence with the [δδδ, δδδ] structure. The results showed that F0 lowering and lengthening were found at domain final position. The final lengthening allowed the offset of the low-rising tones to reach a higher F0 target, not attainable by those in other prosodic positions. Also in this final position the high level tones exhibited a real flap shape due to the greater coarticulation resistance caused by the following boundary breaks. Furthermore, the F0 decreasing rate of the falling tones was found to vary according to domain position: the F0 descended the fastest at domain medial position and the slowest at final position, except for the high checked tones, which showed the same rate at domain-initial and –final positions. This reveals that the vibration of the vocal folds, reflected by the F0 decreasing rate, started from the initial position, gradually speeded up to the highest rate at medial position and then slowed down till the pre-boundary domain-final one.

Measures of Facial Muscle Activation, Intra-oral Pressure and Mouthpiece Force in Trumpet Playing

Trumpet performance builds on the synergy of multiple factors. From a physiological point of view, the production of a simple musical tone relies on the control of the pressure at the lips, the contact force on the mouthpiece, and the oral articulatory gestures and configurations. Whereas previous studies described the magnitude of these control parameters in the quasi-static regime of the oscillation, the present investigation focuses on their temporal evolution and interrelation. Intra-oral pressure, mouthpiece force, facial muscular activity of two groups of muscles, and the radiated sound were recorded from three professional players performing isolated and articulated tones with three different dynamics. Results showed that the experimental conditions affected the amount and location of variability in the performance, and the behaviour of intra-oral pressure at note initiation. All together, this suggests that different dynamics and sequencing may cause a reorganization of the mechanisms underlying the production of a tone.

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.

Second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by tonal and non-tonal language speakers

This study examines whether second language (L2) learners from tonal and non-tonal first language (L1) backgrounds differ in their perception and production of L2 tones. Ten English-speaking and nine Cantonese-speaking learners participated in Experiment 1, which consisted of the following three tasks: identifying auditory tonal stimuli using Mandarin tonal labels (Identification), mimicking tonal stimuli (Mimicry), and producing tones based upon Mandarin tonal labels (Reading). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the Cantonese group did not perform significantly better than the English group in perceiving and producing Mandarin tones. Both groups had significant difficulty in distinguishing Mandarin Tone 2 (T2) and Tone 3 (T3), and the Cantonese group also had additional trouble distinguishing Mandarin Tone 1 (T1) and Tone 4 (T4). Overall, across the different tasks of Experiment 1 learners had similar accuracy rates and error patterns, indicating comparable tone perception and production abilities. However, learners were significantly better at mimicking tones than at identifying or reading them, suggesting that the major difficulty learners faced in acquiring Mandarin tones was associating pitch contours with discrete tonal labels. This difficulty, however, may be specific to tone acquisition. Seven of the nine Cantonese participants took part in Experiment 2, which assessed their perceptual assimilation of Mandarin tones to Cantonese tones. The results of Experiment 2 helped explain Cantonese learners' T1–T4 confusion by showing that these two tones were mapped onto overlapping Cantonese tonal categories. However, the mapping results would not predict prevailing T2–T3 confusion as observed in Experiment 1, suggesting that this confusion stemmed from factors outside of learners' L1 experience. This study argues that the T2–T3 contrast is hard for L2 learners regardless of their native languages, because of these two tones' acoustic similarity and complex phonological relationship. This suggests that for explaining difficulties in acquisition of certain L2 sounds, factors other than learners' L1 background may also play a significant role.

Effect of chitosan coating on some characteristics of mango (Mangifera indica L.) “Ataulfo” subjected to hydrothermal process

Because of the possible presence of immature stages of the Mexican fruit fly, Anastrepha ludens (Loew), the mango fruits cv. Ataulfo are most often treated by immersion in hot water (46.1°C during 90 min. This hydrothermal process has been shown to accelerate the ripening of fruit, but undesirable effect can be reversed with the use of coatings of various compositions. The objective for this study was to determine the effect of chitosan coating on physicochemical and biochemical parameters of Ataulfo mango subjected to hydrothermal process. Using mature green fruit, free from both physical and biological damage, the following treatments were established: 1) Fruits with hydrothermal process not coated with chitosan (HCh-), 2) fruits with hydrothermal process coated with chitosan (HCh+), 3) fruits without hydrothermal process not coated with chitosan (Ch-) and 4) fruits without hydrothermal process coated with chitosan (Ch+). All fruits were stored for 21 days at 22°C and 80 to 85% RH. At the end of their storage, fruits of HCh+ treatment had higher values of firmness, but weight loss, pH, PG and PME activity, production of CO2, tone and chromaticity, lower than those shown by the fruits of HCh- treatment. The results obtained in treatments Ch-and Ch+, together with those reported by other authors who used chitosan as a coating, suggests a hypothesis: that the attenuation in the physiology of the fruits are due to changes in gas transfer. Key words: Gas transfer, postharvest quality, biocoating, ripening.

Acoustic characteristics of three-year-olds' correct and incorrect monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tone productions

This study aimed to provide insights into children's development of lexical tone production by combining both perceptual and acoustic analyses. Duration and fundamental frequency analyses were performed on the monosyllabic Mandarin lexical tones produced by the 13 three-year-old children and four female adults reported in Wong, Schwartz, and Jenkins (2005). Seven acoustic parameters that strongly associated with the tonal judgments of 10 Mandarin-speaking judges were identified. Qualitative differences of the seven parameters in adult correct, child correct, and child incorrect tone productions were compared and interpreted with reference to the perception data. The results confirmed that three-year-old children do not produce adult-like tones in isolated monosyllabic words. Even children's tones that are correctly categorized by adult listeners are phonetically different than adults' tones. The four tones from the most to the least adult-like are Tone 4 (Falling), Tone 1 (High Level), Tone 2 (Rising), and Tone 3 (Falling–Rising), perhaps corresponding to the complexity of speech motor control for producing these tones. Children demonstrate more difficulties producing low fundamental frequencies than high fundamental frequencies. The findings support the position that tone acquisition is a protracted process, which may be affected by production complexities.

Effect of Tones on Vocal Attack Time in Cantonese Speakers

Vocal attack time (VAT) is the time lag between the growth of the sound pressure signal and the development of physical contact of vocal folds at vocal initiation. It can be derived by a cross-correlation of short-time amplitude changes occurring in the sound pressure and electroglottographic (EGG) signals. Cantonese is a tone language in which tone determines the lexical meaning of the syllable. Such linguistic function of tone has implications for the physiology of tone production. The aim of the present study was to investigate the possible effects of Cantonese tones on VAT. Sound pressure and EGG signals were simultaneously recorded from 59 native Cantonese speakers (31 females and 28 males). The subjects were asked to read aloud 12 disyllabic words comprising homophone pairs of the six Cantonese lexical tones. Results revealed a gender difference in VAT values, with the mean VAT significantly smaller in females than in males. There was also a significant difference in VAT values between the two tone categories, with the mean VAT values of the three level tones (tone 1, 3, and 6) significantly smaller than those of the three contour tones (tone 2, 4, and 5). The findings support the notion that norms and interpretations based on nontone European languages may not be directly applied to tone languages.

Design guidelines for rooms used for music, speech, and teaching

Good architectural acoustic design requires an appropriate combination of absorptive, reflective and diffusive surfaces, providing attenuation, redirection, and uniform scattering. Since the terms acoustical and absorptive have become synonymous in common parlance, education of the architectural design community is needed to understand the use of reflective and diffusive surfaces in spaces used for speech, music rehearsal and performance, and teaching. For example, in speech and teaching rooms, where the signal to noise ratio and associated intelligibility are the central issues, designs must not only lower the noise with absorption and isolation but also passively increase the signal with diffusion/reflection. In music education and rehearsal spaces, absorptive low frequency and volume control are important, but reflection/diffusion is equally important for ensemble, tone production and intonation control. In an effort to develop design guidelines, we will review the German standard DIN 18041 on “Acoustic Quality in small and medium sized rooms” (1968, 2004), which standardizes performance objectives in rooms with a volume up to 5000 cbm used for music, speech, and teaching. A frequency and volume dependent suggestion for the reverberation time will be presented as a function of the volume index and examples will be provided.

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.

Perceptual accommodation to rate, talker, and context in Mandarin

The present research examines how perceptual constancy is achieved by exploring three fundamental sources of acoustic variability: changes in the rate at which a sentence is spoken, differences due to which speaker produced the sentence, and variations resulting from the sentence context. These sources of variability are investigated by examining the processing of Mandarin tone (specifically Tone 2 and Tone 3). Acoustic analyses (fundamental frequency and duration) of tone productions of 12 native speakers were conducted. These data were then used to construct stimuli to evaluate perceptual adjustments to speaking rate, talker, and context. 14 target stimuli were created varying in temporal, spectral, and both temporal and spectral characteristics. These target stimuli were preceded by six different precursor sentences representing different speaking rates, speakers, and contexts. Participants were asked for their tone judgments. Analyses show interactions between precursor type and target manipulation. Specifically, normalization primarily occurs when precursor and target vary along the same acoustic dimension. However, variation in coarticulatory context violated this pattern. These experiments will be discussed in terms of the use of temporal and spectral cues and its interaction with listener normalization of speaking rate and talker. [Research supported by NSF.]

Lexical tone disruption in Shona after brain damage

Background: The issue of production and perception of lexical tone in patients with brain lesions has been investigated mainly through East Asian languages and Norwegian. The present study investigated the lateralisation of lexical tone in Shona, a Bantu language. Van Lancker (1980) proposed a continuum scale of the levels of functional pitch in the speech signal. According to the functional lateralisation account (FLH), the left hemisphere (LH) is associated with highly structured pitch contrasts, such as phonological tone, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) is specialised for the least structured pitch functions cueing emotional and personal information. The extant data show that the ability to produce and identify lexical tone is frequently more impaired as a result of lesions to the LH than RH lesions. Aims: The present investigation focused on the lateralisation of lexical tone in Shona speakers. The study sought to validate if the scale of hemispheric lateralisation as proposed by Van Lancker (1980) is also valid for Shona, a Bantu language. Methods & Procedures: We examined five LH damaged (LHD) patients and five RH (RHD) damaged patients using a confrontational picture-naming task and a lexical tone identification task of Shona lexical tone. The first experiment investigated the ability of LHD patients and RHD patients to identify Shona lexical tone in 60 disyllabic minimal pairs. The second experiment examined the ability of Shona brain-damaged patients to produce lexical tone using a confrontational picture-naming task with 120 lexical items. Outcomes & Results: We observed a dissociation in the performance of both the LHD and RHD patients in the two tasks. Both groups were impaired in the tone identification task relative to the non-brain-damaged controls. However, RHD patients performed significantly better than the LHD patients in the tone identification task. On the other hand, both LHD and RHD groups were equally impaired in the tone production task in comparison to the controls. Conclusions: The discrepancy in the production and perception of Shona lexical tone for this group of brain-damaged patients shows that, although the two modes are related, they do not always get disrupted at the same level after brain damage. The results from the tone identification task suggest to a certain extent that the FLH is also valid for Shona. In order to account for all the data there is need to carefully consider alternative accounts like the acoustic cue hypothesis (Van Lancker & Sidtis, 1992).

Acoustic representations for tonal phonological categories.

The learnability of tonal categories was investigated by studying how category separability is affected by different phonetic representations of tone. Gauthier et al. [(2007)] found that f 0 velocity contours densely sampled over time were sufficient for near-perfect categorization of Mandarin tones. Since infant learners begin as “citizens of the world” before developing language-specific representations of sound categories in response to ambient language input [Kuhl (2004)], cross-linguistic data were studied. Based on tonal production data from Bole, Igbo, Mandarin, Cantonese, and White Hmong, we found that (1) densely sampled f 0 velocity contours are insufficient for learning tones, but (2) coarse temporal sampling of phonetic features can produce well-separated tonal categories, and moreover, that (3) phonetic features for tonal representation necessarily extend beyond f 0 to voice quality features, and (4) features for tonal representation are language-specific. Results (2) and (3) were also supported by tonal perception experiments in Cantonese. It was found that listeners can maintain tonal identification accuracy under coarse sampling (down to three to five samples per syllable), with the speech signal interrupted with noise as in multiple phoneme restoration experiments. It was also found that listeners are biased in tonal identification by creaky voice in the speech signal.

Effects of Clarinet Embouchure on Band Director Tone Quality Preferences: An Exploratory Study

Woodwind methods classes are where most teachers learn the basics of woodwind embouchure and tone production. Woodwind methods texts and beginning band methods disagree on clarinet embouchure. One cannot readily reduce any embouchure to one or two attributes; however, clarinet teachers and band directors often disagree about whether the corners of the mouth are pulled back into a smile or come in toward the mouthpiece, as if saying the letter “Q.” The purpose of this study was to determine if the abovementioned embouchure differences affect clarinet tone quality to a degree that band and orchestra directors would prefer either the “Smile” or the “Q” embouchure sound.Two graduate clarinet majors, one taught using the “Smile” embouchure and the other taught using the “Q” embouchure, recorded a series of sustained tones, scales, clarinet solo literature, and band repertoire to provide examples for timbre analysis and to provide tone quality survey items sent to randomly selected U.S. band directors. Although the response rate was low, results of the survey showed that band directors who responded preferred the tone quality generated by the player with the “Q” embouchure.