INTERSPEECH 2013 14thAnnual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association Lyon, France August 25-29, 2013

Vowel Identity Conditions the Time Course of Tone Recognition

Jason A. Shaw, Michael D. Tyler, Benjawan Kasisopa, Yuan Ma, Michael Proctor, Chong Han, Donald Derrick, Denis Burnham

University of Western Sydney, Australia

Using eye-tracking in a visual world paradigm, we sought converging evidence for the time course of Mandarin Chinese tone recognition as predicted by the availability of information in F₀ and past results from a gating experiment. Our results showed that tones 1 and 2 are recognized earlier than tone 4, followed by tone 3. With the exception of tone 2, which was recognized earlier than expected, our results are consistent with those found in gating. The speed of tone 2 recognition varied significantly across vowels in our study, part of a broader pattern whereby vowels systematically influenced the time course of tone recognition. Rising tones, tone 2 and tone 3, were recognized earliest when co-produced with /a/. The falling tone, tone 4, was recognized earliest when co-produced with /u/.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Shaw, Jason A. / Tyler, Michael D. / Kasisopa, Benjawan / Ma, Yuan / Proctor, Michael / Han, Chong / Derrick, Donald / Burnham, Denis (2013): "Vowel identity conditions the time course of tone recognition", In INTERSPEECH-2013, 3142-3146.