Context effects on tone and intonation processing in mandarin

Min Liu, Yiya Chen, Niels O. Schiller

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

This study investigated how Mandarin listeners process tone and intonation when the F0 encodings of the lexical tone and intonation are in conflict or in congruency and the role context plays during these processes. Tone and intonation identification experiments were conducted within neutral vs. constraining semantic contexts. Tone identification was much easier than intonation identification irrespective of contexts. Participants could perceive tones accurately and quickly in both question and statement intonation. However, intonation identification was greatly deteriorated within the neutral semantic context. Questions ending with a rising tone and a falling tone were equally difficult to identify. In a constraining semantic context, questions ending with a falling tone were much better identified. Thus, top-down information provided by the constraining semantic context does play an important role in disentangling intonation information from tone information. © 2016, International Speech Communications Association. All rights reserved.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1056-1060
JournalProceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody
Volume2016-January
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes
Event8th Speech Prosody 2016 - Boston, United States
Duration: 31 May 20163 Jun 2016

Bibliographical note

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Research Keywords

  • Context
  • Intonation
  • Mandarin
  • Tone

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