The Role of Surface and Underlying Forms When Processing Tonal Alternations in Mandarin Chinese: A Mismatch Negativity Study

Overview

Journal Front Psychol

Date 2020 Apr 24

PMID 32322230

Citations 3

Authors

Yu-Fu Chien

Xiao Yang

Robert Fiorentino

Joan A Sereno

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Phonological alternation (sound change depending on the phonological environment) poses challenges to spoken word recognition models. Mandarin Chinese T3 sandhi is such a phenomenon in which a tone 3 (T3) changes into a tone 2 (T2) when followed by another T3. In a mismatch negativity (MMN) study examining Mandarin Chinese T3 sandhi, participants passively listened to either a T2 word [tʂu2 je4] /tʂu2 je4/, a T3 word [tʂu3 je4] /tʂu3 je4/, a sandhi word [tʂu2 jen3] /tʂu3 jen3/, or a mix of T3 and sandhi word standards. The deviant in each condition was a T2 word [tʂu2]. Results showed an MMN only in the T2 and T3 conditions but not in the Sandhi or Mix conditions. All conditions also yielded omission MMNs. This pattern cannot be explained based on the surface forms of standards and deviants; rather these data suggest an underspecified or underlying T3 stored linguistic representation used in spoken word processing.

Citing Articles

The Role of Categorical Perception and Acoustic Details in the Processing of Mandarin Tonal Alternations in Contexts: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Tu J, Chien Y Front Psychol. 2022; 12:756921.

PMID: 35197880 PMC: 8858952. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.756921.

Electrophysiological Signatures of Perceiving Alternated Tone in Mandarin Chinese: Mismatch Negativity to Underlying Tone Conflict.

Zeng Y, Fiorentino R, Zhang J Front Psychol. 2021; 12:735593.

PMID: 34646215 PMC: 8504678. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.735593.

Processing Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi at the Morphosyntactic Interface: Reduplication and Lexical Compounds.

Gao F, Lyu S, Lin C Front Psychol. 2021; 12:713665.

PMID: 34512472 PMC: 8427194. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.713665.

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