The perception of speech and non-speech tones by tone and non-tone language listeners

Zhen Qin, Peggy Mok

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference Proceeding/ReportConference Paper published in a bookpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study tested how linguistic experience and psychoacoustic factors affect tonal perception of Mandarin, English and French speakers. AX discrimination tasks of speech and non-speech tones were conducted. Results showed that the subjects performed differently in the speech and nonspeech tasks. In the speech task, while the three L1 groups shared some confusable tone pairs due to their acoustical similarity, they differed in specific pairs under the influence of L1 linguistic experience. In the non-speech task, however, the three L1 groups did not have different error patterns of individual pairs. In short, both L1 experience and psychoacoustic similarity of stimuli were found to have an impact on the perception of non-native tones.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2012
PublisherTongji University Press
Pages366-369
Number of pages4
ISBN (Print)9787560848693
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event6th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2012, SP 2012 - Shanghai, China
Duration: 22 May 201225 May 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 6th International Conference on Speech Prosody, SP 2012
Volume1

Conference

Conference6th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2012, SP 2012
Country/TerritoryChina
CityShanghai
Period22/05/1225/05/12

Keywords

  • Cross-linguistic study
  • Linguistic experience
  • Psychoacoustic similarity
  • Tone perception

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