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Speakers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are found to exhibit atypical pitch patterns in speech production. However, little is known about the production of lexical tones (T1, T2, T3, T4) as well as neutral tones (T1N, T2N, T3N, T4N) by tone-language speakers with ASD. Thus, this study investigated the height and shape of tones produced by Mandarin-speaking children with ASD and their age-matched typically developing (TD) peers. A pronunciation experiment was conducted in which the participants were asked to produce reduplicated nouns. The findings from the acoustic analyses showed that although ASD children generally produced both lexical tones and neutral tones with distinct tonal contours, there were significant differences between the ASD and TD groups for tone height and shape for T1/T1N, T3/T3N, and T4/T4N. However, we did not find any difference in T2/T2N. These data implied that the atypical acoustic pattern in the ASD group could be partially due to the suppression of the F0 range. Moreover, we found that ASD children tended to produce more errors for T2/T2N, T3/T3N than for T1/T1N, T4/T4N. The pattern of tone errors could be explained by the acquisition principle of pitch, similarities among different tones, and tone sandhi. We thus concluded that deficits in pitch processing could be responsible for the atypical tone pattern of ASD children, and speculated that the atypical tonal contours might also be due to imitation deficits. The present findings may eventually help enhance the comprehensive understanding of the representation of atypical pitch patterns in ASD across languages.

Phonological alternations pose challenges for models of spoken word recognition in how surface information is mapped onto stored representations in the lexicon. In the current study, an auditory-auditory priming lexical decision experiment was conducted to investigate the alternating representations of Mandarin Tone 3 in both half-third and third tone sandhi contexts. In Mandarin, a full Tone 3 (213) is reduced to an abridged tone (21) when followed by Tone 1, Tone 2, or Tone 4 (half-third tone sandhi), and Tone 3 is replaced by Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (third tone sandhi). In the half-third sandhi block, disyllabic targets with a half-third (21) or full-third (213) tone FIRST syllable and a Tone 2 (35) or Tone 4 (51) second syllable were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control prime. In the third tone sandhi block, third-tone sandhi disyllabic targets with a half-third or full-third SECOND syllable were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control prime. Results showed that both half-third and full-third primes elicited significantly faster reaction times relative to the control Tone 1 condition. The size of the facilitation was not influenced by prime condition, target frequency, targets’ first syllable tone or targets’ second syllable tone. These data suggest that Mandarin T3 may be a more abstract tone and stored as the first syllable for both types of sandhi words.

This study investigated the perception of Mandarin tonal alternations in disyllabic words. In Mandarin, a low-dipping Tone3 is converted to a high-rising Tone2 when followed by another Tone3, known as third tone sandhi. Although previous studies showed statistically significant differences in F0 between a high-rising Sandhi-Tone3 (T3) and a Tone2, native Mandarin listeners failed to correctly categorize these two tones in perception tasks. The current study utilized the visual-world paradigm in eye-tracking to further examine whether acoustic details in lexical tone aid lexical access in Mandarin. Results showed that Mandarin listeners tend to process Tone2 as Tone2 whereas they tend to first process Sandhi-T3 as both Tone3 and Tone2, then later detect the acoustic differences between the two tones revealed by the sandhi context, and finally activate the target word during lexical access. The eye-tracking results suggest that subtle acoustic details of F0 may facilitate lexical access in automatic fashion in a tone language.

Disyllabic verb-noun (V-N) items in Shanghai Wu have variable surface tone patterns: They can undergo either a rightward extension tone sandhi, which extends the lexical tone of the first syllable over the entire word, or tonal reduction on the first syllable. The current study investigates how the phonological properties of these alternation processes as well as variation influence how Shanghai speakers represent and access such words. We conducted an auditory-auditory priming lexical decision experiment on Shanghai V-N items that can undergo either tonal extension or tonal reduction with native Shanghai speakers. Each disyllabic target was preceded by monosyllabic primes with the canonical tone, the tonal-extension tone, the surface tone, or a tone unrelated to the tone of the first syllable of the targets. Results showed both canonical and tonal-extension priming effects, but no surface priming effect. Moreover, although more familiar V-Ns were recognized with shorter reaction time, the priming effect did not interact with speakers’ familiarity ratings or sandhi preference ratings of the targets. These data are consistent with the interpretation that both the canonical and tonal-extension forms are represented in Shanghai speakers’ mental lexicon due to tone sandhi variation, but the representation does not seem to be modulated by the frequencies of the variants. Also, together with findings from auditory priming studies of other tone sandhi patterns, the current study suggests that certain phonological properties of an alternation, such as its locality and transparency, influence the representation of words undergoing the alternation; but whether the alternation is structure-preserving does not seem to impact the representation.

Although Mandarin and Beijing Chinese are both tone language, Beijing Chinese, a dialect spoken in Beijing, is considered more colloquial. This study examines the acoustic properties of the vocal expression of emotions in Beijing Chinese. Using an emotional-stories elicitation method (Anolli etal., 2008), 30 native speakers of Beijing Chinese produced one target sentence in eight emotions, including anger, contempt, fear, guilt, joy, pride, sadness, and shame. The same sentence produced in a neutral condition was used as the baseline. The results showed that mean f0 values were high for shame and fear, while low for pride and anger. Pitch variation was high for shame and guilt, but low in sad and pride. Shame and sad also yielded high intensity variation. For speech rate, guilt was expressed with the fastest speech rate, while sad with the slowest. Longer pauses were found for sad, and shorter pauses for anger and guilt. Unlike Anolli et al . (2008), in which Mandarin speakers showed low f0 variation and slow speech rate for guilt, the current results showed that pitch variation was high for guilt, and it was characterized by the fastest speech rate in Beijing. It suggests that for tone language, regardless of the similar phonological systems, emotions were expressed differently in a more colloquial situation.

Phonological alternations pose challenges for models of spoken word recognition in how surface information is mapped onto stored representations in the lexicon. In the current study, an auditory-auditory priming lexical decision experiment was conducted to investigate the alternating representations of Mandarin Tone 3 in both half-third and third tone sandhi contexts. In Mandarin, a full Tone 3 (213) is reduced to an abridged tone (21) when followed by Tone 1, Tone 2, or Tone 4 (half-third tone sandhi), and Tone 3 is replaced by Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (third tone sandhi). In the half-third sandhi block, disyllabic targets with a half-third (21) or full-third (213) tone FIRST syllable and a Tone 2 (35) or Tone 4 (51) second syllable were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control prime. In the third tone sandhi block, third-tone sandhi disyllabic targets with a half-third or full-third SECOND syllable were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control prime. Results showed that both half-third and full-third primes elicited significantly faster reaction times relative to the control Tone 1 condition. The size of the facilitation was not influenced by prime condition, target frequency, targets' first syllable tone or targets' second syllable tone. These data suggest that Mandarin T3 may be a more abstract tone and stored as the first syllable for both types of sandhi words.

This study investigated the perception of Mandarin tonal alternations in disyllabic words. In Mandarin, a low-dipping Tone3 is converted to a high-rising Tone2 when followed by another Tone3, known as third tone sandhi. Although previous studies showed statistically differences in F0 between a high-rising Sandhi-Tone3 (T3) and a Tone2, native Mandarin listeners failed to correctly categorize these two tones in perception tasks (Peng, 2000). The current study utilized the visual-world paradigm in eye-tracking to further examine whether acoustic details in lexical tone aid lexical access in Mandarin. Results showed that Mandarin listeners tend to first process Sandhi-T3 as Sandhi-T3 and Tone2 as both tones, then later detect the acoustic differences between the two tones revealed by the sandhi context, and finally activate the target word during lexical access. The eye-tracking results suggest that subtle acoustic details of F0 may facilitate lexical access in automatic fashion in a tone language.

This study investigates whether second language learners’ processing of stress can be explained by the degree to which suprasegmental cues contribute to lexical identity in the native language. It focuses on Standard Mandarin, Taiwan Mandarin, and American English listeners’ processing of stress in English nonwords. In Mandarin, fundamental frequency contributes to lexical identity by signaling lexical tones, but only in Standard Mandarin does duration distinguish stressed–unstressed and stressed–stressed words. Participants completed sequence-recall tasks containing English disyllabic nonwords contrasting in stress. Experiment 1 used natural stimuli; Experiment 2 used resynthesized stimuli that isolated fundamental frequency and duration cues. Experiment 1 revealed no difference among the groups; in Experiment 2, Standard Mandarin listeners used duration more than Taiwan Mandarin listeners did. These results are interpreted within a cue-weighting theory of speech perception.

Taiwanese tonal alternation is realized in a circular chain shift fashion for both smooth and checked syllables. Debate regarding the processes of less productive Taiwanese tonal alternation has centered on whether a surface tone is derived from an underlying tone, or whether a surface tone is selected without undergoing any derivation. The current study investigates this controversial issue by examining Taiwanese checked tone and smooth tone sandhi neutralization in production. In particular, we analyzed whether checked citation and sandhi tone 53 (C21→C53), checked citation and sandhi tone 21 (C53→C21), smooth citation and sandhi tone 55 (S51→S55), and smooth citation and sandhi tone 21 (S33→S21) are acoustically completely neutralized in fundamental frequency (F0) height, contour, and duration. A non-sandhi exception was also included to evaluate the effect of position-in-word on F0 height and duration given that citation tones always appear in phrase-final position. Any trace of influence from the underlying representation would indicate a computational mechanism, whereas the absence of any trace would suggest a lexical mechanism for the production of Taiwanese tonal alternation. Results did not show any influence of F0 height, F0 contour, or tone duration from the underlying representation for both checked and smooth tones, supporting a lexical mechanism in speech production for less productive tonal alternations.

Abstract underlying representations play a crucial role in capturing predictable relations among different phonetic categories in phonological theory. Tone sandhi is a tonal alternation phenomenon in which a tone changes to a different tone in certain phonological environments. This study investigates whether Taiwanese listeners are more sensitive to the surface form of the tones or the underlying tonal representations of tone sandhi words. An auditory lexical decision experiment was conducted to examine priming effects between monosyllabic primes and disyllabic target words (tone sandhi T51 → T55 and sandhi T24 → T33). Each target was preceded by either a surface-tone prime (e.g., ping55-ping55tsun24; pue33-pue33jong51), an underlying-tone prime (e.g., ping51-ping55tsun24; pue24-pue33jong51), or an unrelated control (e.g., ping21-ping55tsun24; pue21-pue33jong51). Results showed significant differences in the natue of the priming effects across the two sandhi types, with productivity of the tone sandhi rule influencing how listeners’ process and represent tone sandhi words.

Neutralization is a phenomenon in which two different phonemes are realized as the same sound in certain phonetic environments. In Mandarin, a low-dipping Tone3 is converted to a high-rising Tone2 when followed by another Tone3, known as Third-Tone sandhi. Although previous studies showed statistically differences in F0 between a Sandhi-Tone3 (high-rising) and a Tone2, native Mandarin listeners failed to correctly categorize these two tones in perception tasks (Peng, 2000). The current study utilized the visual-world paradigm in eye-tracking to further investigate whether acoustic details in lexical tone aid lexical access in Mandarin. In the first experiment, we replicated previous studies in that production data of ten disyllabic minimal pairs of Sandhi-Tone3 + Tone3 and Tone2 + Tone3 words showed differences in F0 for the initial tones, but Mandarin listeners’ accuracy in identifying them was only around 50%. In the eye-tracking experiment, results showed that proportion of looks to pictures corresponding to Sandhi-Tone3 + Tone3 words was significantly higher when Mandarin listeners heard Sandhi-Tone3 + Tone3 words. A similar pattern was found when auditory stimuli were Tone2 + Tone3 words. The eye-tracking results demonstrated that subtle acoustic details of F0 aid lexical access in a tone language. Mandarin listeners with or without musical training will also be compared.

Phonological alternations pose challenges to models of spoken word recognition in how surface information is mapped onto stored representations in the lexicon. In Mandarin, a full Tone3 (213) is reduced to an abridged tone (21) (half-third sandhi) when followed by Tone1, Tone2, or Tone4. In addition, Mandarin Tone3 is replaced by Tone2 when followed by another Tone3 (third-tone sandhi). Two experiments used auditory-auditory priming lexical decision to investigate the alternating representations of Tone3. In Experiment 1, targets consisted of disyllabic words with a half-third or full-third FIRST syllable. These targets were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control Tone1 prime. RT data showed facilitation effects for both half-third and full-third prime conditions, with no first syllable by prime type interaction. In Experiment 2, third-tone sandhi targets consisted of disyllabic words with a half-third or full-third SECOND syllable. These targets were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control Tone1 prime. The data also showed both half-third and full-third priming effects, without any second syllable by prime type interaction. The results suggest that Mandarin Tone3 is stored as half-third (21) and full-third (213) forms, with both of these tone3 phonological alternations activated.

The paper aims to examine how the acoustic input (the surface form) and the abstract linguistic representation (the underlying representation) interact during spoken word recognition by investigating left-dominant tone sandhi, a tonal alternation in which the underlying tone of the first syllable spreads to the sandhi domain. We conducted two auditory-auditory priming lexical decision experiments on Shanghai left-dominant sandhi words with less-frequent and frequent Shanghai users, in which each disyllabic target was preceded by monosyllabic primes either sharing the same underlying tone, surface tone, or being unrelated to the tone of the first syllable of the sandhi targets. Results showed a surface priming effect but not an underlying priming effect in younger speakers who used Shanghai less frequently, but no surface or underlying priming effect in older speakers who used Shanghai more often. Moreover, the surface priming did not interact with speakers’ familiarity ratings to the sandhi targets. These patterns suggest that left-dominant Shanghai sandhi words may be represented in the sandhi form in the mental lexicon. The results are discussed in the context of how phonological opacity, productivity, the non-structure-preserving nature of tone spreading, and speakers’ semantic knowledge influence the representation and processing of tone sandhi words.

Phonological alternation, in which a sound changes depending on its phonological environment, poses challenges to spoken word recognition models. Mandarin T3 sandhi is such a phenomenon in which a tone 3 changes into a tone 2 when followed by another T3, which raises questions regarding whether the human brain processes the surface acoustic-phonetic representation or the underlying linguistic representation of Mandarin T3 sandhi words. We conducted a mismatch negativity (MMN) study examining this issue. Participants passively listened to a T2 word [tʂu2 je4] /tʂu2 je4/, a T3 word [tʂu3 ʐən4] /tʂu3 ʐən4/, a Sandhi word [tʂu2 jen3] /tʂu3 jen3/, or a mix of T3 and sandhi words in an odd-ball paradigm. All were interspersed with a T2 word [tʂu2] (deviant). Results showed an MMN only in the T2 and T3 condition but not in the Sandhi or Mix condition. The fact that the surface acoustic information in the T2 and Sandhi conditions was identical, yet yielding disparate MMN results suggests that Mandarin speakers pr...

Taiwanese tonal alternation is realized in a circular chain shift fashion for both smooth and checked syllables. Debate regarding the processes of Taiwanese tonal alternation has centered on whether a surface tone is derived from an underlying tone, or whether a surface tone is selected without undergoing any derivation. The current study investigates this controversial issue by examining Taiwanese checked tone and smooth tone neutralization in production. In particular, we analyzed whether smooth citation and sandhi tone 55 (T51→T55) are completely neutralized in F0 contour, F0 height, and duration. We further extended the Taiwanese neutralization literature by also comparing smooth citation and sandhi tone 21 (T33→T21), checked citation and sandhi tone 53 (CT21→CT53), and checked citation and sandhi tone 21 (CT53→CT21). Non-sandhi exceptions were also included to evaluate the effect of position-in-word on F0 height and duration given that citation tones always appear in phrase-final position. Complete n...

In Mandarin, tone 3 sandhi is a tonal alternation phenomenon in which a tone 3 syllable changes to a tone 2 syllable when it is followed by another tone 3 syllable. Thus, the initial syllable of Mandarin bisyllabic sandhi words is tone 3 underlyingly but becomes tone 2 on the surface. An auditory-auditory priming lexical decision experiment was conducted to investigate how Mandarin tone 3 sandhi words are processed by Mandarin native listeners. The experiment examined prime-target pairs, with monosyllabic primes and bisyllabic Mandarin tone 3 sandhi targets. Each tone sandhi target word was preceded by one of three corresponding monosyllabic primes: a tone 2 prime (Surface-Tone overlap) (chu2-chu3li3), a tone 3 prime (Underlying-Tone overlap) (chu3-chu3li3), or a control prime (Baseline condition) (chu1-chu3li3). In order to assess the contribution of frequency of occurrence, 15 High Frequency and 15 Low Frequency sandhi target words were used. Thirty native speakers of Mandarin participated. Results showed that tone 3 sandhi targets elicited significantly stronger facilitation effects in the Underlying-Tone condition than in the Surface-Tone condition, with little effect of frequency of occurrence. The data will be discussed in terms of lexical access and the nature of the representation of Mandarin words.