Tone Production Research Articles

An experimental study of the oscillatory flow structure of tone-producing supersonic impinging jets

An experimental investigation into the structure of a supersonic jet impinging on a large plate is presented. Digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV), shadowgraph photography and acoustic measurements are used to understand the relationship between the unsteady jet structure and the production of tones for nozzle-to-plate spacings between 1 and 5 nozzle exit diameters at a nozzle–pressure ratio equal to 4. Results indicate that the instability of the jet depends on the location of the plate in the shock cell structure of the corresponding free jet and the strength of the standoff shock wave, rather than on the occurrence of recirculation zones in the impingement region. Phase-locked studies show streamwise displacements of the stand-off shock wave, a moving recirculation zone in the subsonic flow in front of the plate, and significant oscillations of both the compression and expansion regions in the peripheral supersonic flow when tones are produced. Sound is shown to be generated by periodic pulsing of the wall jet boundary resulting from periodic motion of the flow in the impingement and near-wall regions of the flow.

Perception and Production of Lexical Tones by 3-Year-Old, Mandarin-Speaking Children

The present study investigated 3-year-old children's perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. Thirteen 3-year-old, Mandarin-speaking children participated in the study. Tone perception was examined by a picture-pointing task, and tone production was investigated by picture naming. To compare children's productions with the adult forms, 4 mothers of the children were asked to say the same set of words to their children in a picture-reading activity. The children's and mothers' productions were low-pass filtered at 500 Hz and 400 Hz, respectively, to eliminate segmental information. Ten Mandarin-speaking judges identified the productions of tones from the filtered speech. Adult productions were more accurately identified than productions of the children. The children perceived the level, rising, and falling tones with relatively high accuracy. The dipping tone posed the greatest difficulty for the children in both perception and production.

Remapping Auditory-Motor Representations in Voice Production

Evidence regarding visually guided limb movements suggests that the motor system learns and maintains neural maps between motor commands and sensory feedback. Such systems are hypothesized to be used in a feed-forward control strategy that permits precision and stability without the delays of direct feedback control. Human vocalizations involve precise control over vocal and respiratory muscles. However, little is known about the sensorimotor representations underlying speech production. Here, we manipulated the heard fundamental frequency of the voice during speech to demonstrate learning of auditory-motor maps. Mandarin speakers repeatedly produced words with specific pitch patterns (tone categories). On each successive utterance, the frequency of their auditory feedback was increased by 1/100 of a semitone until they heard their feedback one full semitone above their true pitch. Subjects automatically compensated for these changes by lowering their vocal pitch. When feedback was unexpectedly returned to normal, speakers significantly increased the pitch of their productions beyond their initial baseline frequency. This adaptation was found to generalize to the production of another tone category. However, results indicate that a more robust adaptation was produced for the tone that was spoken during feedback alteration. The immediate aftereffects suggest a global remapping of the auditory-motor relationship after an extremely brief training period. However, this learning does not represent a complete transformation of the mapping; rather, it is in part target dependent.

Dissociation in the neural basis underlying Chinese tone and vowel production

Neuropsychologists have debated over whether the processing of segmental and suprasegmental units involves different neural mechanisms. Focusing on the production of Chinese lexical tones (suprasegmental units) and vowels (segmental units), this study used the adaptation paradigm to investigate a possible neural dissociation for tone and vowel production. Ten native Chinese speakers were asked to name Chinese characters and pinyin (Romanized phonetic system for Chinese language) that varied in terms of tones and vowels. fMRI results showed significant differences in the right inferior frontal gyrus between tone and vowel production (more activation for tones than for vowels). Brain asymmetry analysis further showed that tone production was less left-lateralized than vowel production, although both showed left-hemisphere dominance.

Production of Mandarin tone contrasts by musicians and non-musicians

Previous research has shown that native speakers of American English who are musicians perform better than non-musicians when identifying and producing the four phonemic tones of Mandarin. The present study corroborates these findings and analyzes acoustic properties of non-natives’ tonal imitations. Listeners imitated Mandarin two-syllable word phrases that varied the vowel (/li/, /la/, /lu/) and tone (high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping, high-falling) of the first syllable. Four native Mandarin speakers rated the musicians, on average, to be better in their imitation of Mandarin tone 4 (high-falling) than non-musicians. There were no significant differences between groups in how they were rated on the other three tones. Acoustical analyses revealed that non-natives failed to match native speakers both in differences in initial F0 and in F0 contour (change from initial to final F0) across tones. Imitations by musicians did not show significant acoustic differences from non-musicians, except for tone 4, where musicians’ imitations showed a significant decrease in F0 from initial to final portions of the syllable; the decrease in F0 for non-musicians was smaller and not significant. Creaky voice (often present in natives’ tone 3 and 4) was observed in many non-native imitations, but was not restricted to tones 3 and 4.

Examination of voicing onset time during Mandarin tone productions

The voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonant is defined as the time interval between the release of a stop and the onset of the following vowel (Lisker and Abramson, 1964, 1970). Previous studies indicated that VOT could be used as a perceptual cue for identification of both voicing and place of articulation of stops (Kewley-Port, 1983; Ladefoged, 2001). Abramson (1977) suggested VOT could be interpreted as interrelated acoustic consequences of variation in the relative timing of glottal and oral gestures. This study will attempt to extend the probe on this suggestion by comparing the VOT values among different tones. Mandarin, which is a tone language, where a change in the tone of a syllable leads to a change in meaning, will be used in the study. There are four contrastive tones in Mandarin, each of which is realized by changing the vocal pitch during the course of the syllable production. The proposed study will determine if VOT values for each of the six stop sounds (/p,b,t,d,k,g/) will vary with the variation of different tones at which each of the following vowel sounds is produced. The interrelationship between VOT and tone production will be discussed.

Tonal and durational variations as phonetic coding for syllable grouping

While syllables in connected speech are generally believed to be prosodically divided into groups, how such grouping is done phonetically is not fully understood. This study explores the possibility that syllable grouping is partly realized through adjusting articulatory strength and duration. We compared the degrees of tonal undershoot in Mandarin as they are related to syllable position and number of syllables in words or phrases. The sequences consisted of 1–4 syllables with R or F tone and were produced by eight speakers. The all-R and all-F sequences impose great pressure on tone production and hence would best reveal the effects of strength and duration. Results show that as the number of syllables in each sequence increased, both syllable duration and size of F0 excursion decreased. Meanwhile, excursion size varied with syllable location in the sequence. But in each case it was the first and last syllables that had the largest excursions, and the excursion variations cannot be fully accounted for by duration. There thus appear to be both an isochrony effect and an ‘‘edge marking’’ effect. Taking into consideration known prosodic effects on segmental phonemes, syllable grouping as a communicative function seems to involve a rather complex encoding scheme.

Multiphonic model of split pressure-phase modes using the finite-element-method

The generation of multiphonic sounds in blown musical instruments is modeled by an eigenvalue finite-element-method (FEM) calculation. A common technique for the production of multiphonic tones is the use of complex sound-hole closing techniques, where more than one overtone spectrum appears, with fundamental frequencies being in inharmonic relations. Eigenfrequencies of a tube with both ends open are compared to eigenfrequencies of a tube with at least one sound hole open. It shows up that the tube with one open sound hole leads to additional eigenfrequencies in the tube for each node number. This is because of two possibilities of pressure curves within the tube for each node number, the pressure right and left of the hole being in phase or in opposite phase. The frequencies of equal phase form a new overtone structure which is harmonic within itself and so forms a new tone, a multiphonic. So the multiphonic model is in agreement with the Backus formula of multiphonic sounds as a combination of the tubes fundamental and multiples of the frequency difference of the zero node mode components.

A study of the effects of auditory rehabilitation programme for cochlear-implanted children during off-switch state (before switch-on)

performances are similar. With cochlear implants, most children have good voweland consonant-perception skills and even managed good open-set speech comprehension. However, the lexical tone-perception skills often still lag behind. Lexical tone perception and production skills are often well developed within the first two years for children with normal hearing. For the hearing-impaired children using hearing aids or cochlear implants, their tone perception and production performances are often much worse than their other speech perception and production skills. The present design of cochlear implants and the development of different speech-coding strategies are mainly based on the characteristics of intonation languages. The characteristics of tonal languages should be more carefully looked into in the future development of speech coding strategies and design of implants or hearing aids.

Compensation for pitch-shifted auditory feedback during the production of Mandarin tone sequences.

Recent research has found that while speaking, subjects react to perturbations in pitch of voice auditory feedback by changing their voice fundamental frequency (F0) to compensate for the perceived pitch-shift. The long response latencies (150-200 ms) suggest they may be too slow to assist in on-line control of the local pitch contour patterns associated with lexical tones on a syllable-to-syllable basis. In the present study, we introduced pitch-shifted auditory feedback to native speakers of Mandarin Chinese while they produced disyllabic sequences /ma ma/ with different tonal combinations at a natural speaking rate. Voice F0 response latencies (100-150 ms) to the pitch perturbations were shorter than syllable durations reported elsewhere. Response magnitudes increased from 50 cents during static tone to 85 cents during dynamic tone productions. Response latencies and peak times decreased in phrases involving a dynamic change in F0. The larger response magnitudes and shorter latency and peak times in tasks requiring accurate, dynamic control of F0, indicate this automatic system for regulation of voice F0 may be task-dependent. These findings suggest that auditory feedback may be used to help regulate voice F0 during production of bi-tonal Mandarin phrases.

Perception and production of mandarin tones in prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants.

Mandarin is a lexical tone language in which four tones are crucial for determining lexical meanings. Acquisition of such a tone system may be challenging to prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants because, as recent studies have shown, cochlear implant devices are ineffective in encoding voice pitch information required for tone recognition. This study aimed to investigate Mandarin tone production and perception skills of children with cochlear implants. Thirty prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants, ages 6;0 (yr;mo) to 12;6, participated. These children received their implants at an average age of 5;8, with a range from 2;3 to 10;3. The average length of their cochlear implant experience was 3;7, with a range from 1;7 to 6;5. Tasks of tone production and tone identification involved a pictorial protocol of 48 words containing the targeted tones in either monosyllabic or disyllabic forms. The average scores for tone production was 53.09% (SD = 15.42), and for tone identification was 72.88% (SD = 19.68; chance level = 50%). Significant differences were found in the percentages across the production or identification of tone types or tone pairs. The children with exceptional performance in tone production tended to also perform well in tone identification. The children's performance levels in tone identification and production were also discussed in relation to the factors of age at implantation and length of cochlear implant experience. The present results suggest that the majority of prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants did not master Mandarin tone production. However, a small group of participants demonstrated nearly perfect skills of Mandarin tone production in addition to tone perception. Thus, it is necessary to consider factors other than the device's limitations to explain these high levels of performance in the perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones.

Tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants: apreliminary study

ObjectiveMore than a quarter of the world's population speak tone languages, such as Mandarin Chinese. In thoselanguages, the pitch or tone pattern of a monosyllabic word conveys lexical meaning. The purpose of this study was toinvestigate tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs).Material and MethodsSpeech samples were recorded from seven normal-hearing and four CI children aged 4–9 years. Allsubjects were native Mandarin speakers. The speech samples were used for acoustic analysis of the tone patterns, i.e. thefundamental frequency contours. In addition, a tone intelligibility test was carried out in which four normal-hearing nativeMandarin-speaking adults listened to the speech materials and judged the intelligibility of the children's tone production.ResultsThe tone production for the seven normal-hearing children was considered to be perfect in the intelligibility test.Acoustic analysis of the speech materials of the normal-hearing children produced the four typical tone patterns ofMandarin Chinese: (i) high and flat; (ii) rising; (iii) low and dipping; and (iv) falling. The tone patterns produced by thechildren with CIs tended to be flat, with some other patterns being irregular. The results of the tone intelligibility tests alsoshowed degraded intelligibility of tone patterns.ConclusionA potential speech development deficit was documented in prelingually deafened children with CIs whosenative language is a tone language. The imperfect tone production of the implant children, which can be attributed to thepaucity of pitch information delivered via the current CI stimulation, may have significant implications for communicationusing tone languages. Further research is warranted to determine factors that may affect tone development in children withCIs.

Production of Mandarin tones by 3-year-old children acquiring L1 (Mandarin) in an L2 (English) environment

Thirteen monolingual Mandarin-speaking children residing in the U.S. were recruited to examine their production of the four Mandarin lexical tones in monosyllabic words. A picture-naming task was used to elicit the children’s productions of lexical tones in isolated words and in sentence final position. Four mothers were asked to say the same set of words to their children in a picture reading activity. The children’s and the mothers’ productions were recorded and low-pass filtered at 500 and 400 Hz, respectively, to eliminate phonemic and semantic information. Ten Mandarin-speaking judges were recruited to identify the children’s and adults’ tone productions from the filtered stimuli. Contrary to the findings of L1 research conducted in countries where Mandarin is the language of the environment, the present results revealed that the lexical tones produced by 3-year-old children acquiring Mandarin as their first language in the U.S. were not yet adultlike. Children’s tone productions were more difficult to categorize than the mothers’ productions. The judges had significantly more difficulty identifying children’s dipping tones than the children’s level tones, rising tones, or falling tones, suggesting that the dipping tone posed the most difficulties for the children.

Musical experience and Mandarin tone discrimination and imitation

Previous work [T. L. Gottfried and D. Riester, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 2604 (2000)] showed that native speakers of American English with musical training performed better than nonmusicians when identifying the four distinctive tones of Mandarin Chinese (high-level, mid-rising, low-dipping, high-falling). Accuracy for both groups was relatively low since listeners were not trained on the phonemic contrasts. Current research compares musicians and nonmusicians on discrimination and imitation of unfamiliar tones. Listeners were presented with two different Mandarin words that had either the same or different tones; listeners indicated whether the tones were same or different. Thus, they were required to determine a categorical match (same or different tone), rather than an auditory match. All listeners had significantly more difficulty discriminating between mid-rising and low-dipping tones than with other contrasts. Listeners with more musical training showed significantly greater accuracy in their discrimination. Likewise, musicians’ spoken imitations of Mandarin tones (model tokens presented by a native speaker) were rated as significantly more native-like than those of nonmusicians. These findings suggest that musicians may have abilities or training that facilitate their perception and production of Mandarin tones. However, further research is needed to determine whether this advantage transfers to language learning situations.

Tonal production of early and late Canadian Cantonese bilinguals

Previous studies show that native speakers have exhibited changes in both phonetic and phonemic characteristics in their L1 production and perception after living in an L2 community for years. Little is known if the phenomenon is also present in the tonal production of native speakers of tone languages who grew up in an English-speaking environment. This research examines both the phonetic and phonemic features of the six Cantonese tones (i.e., vowel duration, pitch contour, and tonal space) produced by two groups of adult Canadian Cantonese bilinguals: early (AOA: less than 1 year) and late (AOA: 10–13 years). The data collected were compared with those of a group of native Cantonese speakers (AOA: greater than 18 years). Analyses revealed that (i) both the early and the late bilinguals produced significantly longer vowel durations than did the comparison group, and that (ii) their pitch contours and tonal space were significantly different from those of the native speakers. In addition, the early bilinguals’ tonal productions were more deviant from the native productions than those of the late bilinguals.

Basal ganglia efferents to the brainstem centers controlling postural muscle tone and locomotion: a new concept for understanding motor disorders in basal ganglia dysfunction

The present study is designed to elucidate how basal ganglia afferents from the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) to the mesopontine tegmental area of the brainstem contribute to gait control and muscle-tone regulation. We used unanesthetized and acutely decerebrated cats ( n=27) in which the striatum, thalamus and cerebral cortex were removed but the SNr was preserved. Repetitive stimulation (50 Hz, 10–60 μA, for 5–20 s) applied to a mesencephalic locomotor region (MLR), which corresponded to the cuneiform nucleus, and adjacent areas, evoked locomotor movements. On the other hand, stimulation of a muscle-tone inhibitory region in the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPN) suppressed postural muscle tone. An injection of either glutamatergic agonists ( N-methyl- d-aspartic acid and kainic acid) or GABA antagonists (bicuculline and picrotoxin) into the MLR and PPN also induced locomotion and muscle-tone suppression, respectively. Repetitive electrical stimuli (50–100 Hz, 20–60 μA for 5–20 s) delivered to the SNr alone did not alter muscular activity. However stimulating the lateral part of the SNr attenuated and blocked PPN-induced muscle-tone suppression. Moreover, weaker stimulation of the medial part of the SNr reduced the number of step cycles and disturbed the rhythmic alternation of limb movements of MLR-induced locomotion. The onset of locomotion was delayed as the stimulus intensity was increased. At a higher strength SNr stimulation abolished the locomotion. An injection of bicuculline into either the PPN or the MLR diminished the SNr effects noted above. These results suggest that locomotion and postural muscle tone are subject to modulation by GABAergic nigrotegmental projections which have a partial functional topography: a lateral and medial SNr, for regulation of postural muscle tone and locomotion, respectively. We conclude that disorders of the basal ganglia may include dysfunction of the nigrotegmental (basal ganglia–brainstem) systems, which consequently leads to the production of abnormal muscle tone and gait disturbance.

Downstep and high raising: interacting factors in Yoruba tone production

This study examines interacting factors in tone production in Yoruba, a tone language with three tone levels, high (H), mid (M), and low (L). Its primary goals are to confirm the existence of downstep, a principle which causes successive H tones separated by L tones to step down in pitch, and to examine the interaction between downstep and H tone raising, a principle which raises H tones to extra-high values before L tones. Controlled comparisons of data from four speakers reveal that both of these principles apply to H tones satisfying their conditions. As a result of H raising, the first H tone in downstepping sequences of the form HLHLH… is raised well above its expected value, while the following downstepped H tones are kept from descending into the frequency band reserved for M tones. This study also examines the strategies used for economizing pitch space in longer downstepping sequences. The main strategy used by all speakers is H tone resetting; however, some speakers are also found to raise initial H tones to extra-high values in anticipation of downsteps occurring four syllables away. Other interacting factors in Yoruba tone production include tone-specific declination (“downdrift”) operating in the background and local carry-over assimilation from a H tone to the following L tone. These various observations support a compositional model of tone production in which competing factors culminate on individual tones to produce functionally motivated “compromise” f 0 patterns.

Perceptual normalization for inter- and intratalker variation in Cantonese level tones.

Inter- and intratalker variation in the production of lexical tones may contribute to acoustic overlap among tone categories. The present study investigated whether such category overlap gives rise to perceptual ambiguity and, if so, whether listeners are able to reduce this ambiguity using contextual information. In the first experiment, native Cantonese-speaking listeners were asked to identify isolated Cantonese level tones produced by 7 talkers. Identification accuracy was significantly higher when the presentation of items was blocked by talker rather mixed across talkers. In the second experiment, listeners identified the final (target) tone of 6-syllable semantically neutral sentences with f0 patterns of the context (i.e., the first 5 syllables) altered. The same target tone was identified differently depending on the context. In the third experiment, the context portions of stimulus sentences from the second experiment were divided into 2 halves, and their f0 patterns were altered independently. In identifying the target tone, listeners relied more heavily on the f0 pattern of the second (last) half of the context. These results are discussed in relation to characteristic inter- and intratalker variations of lexical tones.

Thoughts on how to play in tune: pitch and intonation

This paper examines the range of intonation practices onthe violin over the last two centuries. There are four types ofexpressive tuning: harmonic, melodic, corrective and colouristic.The development of musical language has created tension betweenthe concepts of pitch and intonation, and necessitated a reassessmentof the value of expressive tuning. The tension between pitch andintonation can be creatively exploited in performance, and examplesof performative microtones demonstrate the extent to which musicianshave been familiar with microtonality throughout the history. Expressivetuning is also seen as an integral part of violin playing becauseof its link with the practice of tone production. The tension betweenpitch and intonation is further investigated in relation to the conceptof musical timbre. The consideration of the totality of musicalsound leads to an intonational understanding of pitch, followedby an example showing its continuing relevance in the performancepractice of new music.

Role of prostaglandins in asthma

Prostaglandins are autacoid mediators that have important regulatory roles in human inflammatory diseases. This article focuses on the immunologic and physiologic roles of prostanoids in asthma, an inflammatory condition that affects 5% to 10% of the population [1]. The strongest predisposing factor for the development of asthma is allergy; therefore, the immunologic effects of prostanoids on allergic inflammation are of great importance [2]. Prostanoids affect smooth muscle tone, vascular permeability, and mucus production, which are important features of asthma [2]. Selected data from in vitro and in vivo studies of animals and humans are summarized to illustrate the presumed role of