Perception of Mandarin Chinese Tone 2 / Tone 3 and the role of creaky voice.

摘要

Research has shown that lexical tones, a suprasegmental feature, are processed by native speakers as linguistic elements just like other segmental information. Among the four tones of Mandarin Chinese, in particular, Tone 2 and Tone 3 are very similar in their pitch contour shapes and thus can be difficult to distinguish in native and nonnative perception. A phonation type, creaky voice, has been reported to be associated with production of Tone 3. This study investigated the perception of Mandarin Tone 2 and Tone 3 and the role of creaky voice in the perception of Tone 3 among native and nonnative listeners. The results showed that creaky voice does not serve as the major cue in perception of Mandarin Tone 3. In fact, the presence of creaky voice seems to pyschoacoustically obscure the actual duration of the falling portion in the tonal contour, making it shorter in perception among both native and non-native listeners.