The Role of Surface and Underlying Forms When Processing Tonal Alternations in Mandarin Chinese: A Mismatch Negativity Study

摘要

Phonological alternation (sound change depending on the phonological environment) poses challenges to spoken word recognition models. Mandarin Chinese T3 sandhi is such a phenomenon in which a tone 3 (T3) changes into a tone 2 (T2) when followed by another T3. In a mismatch negativity (MMN) study examining Mandarin Chinese T3 sandhi, participants passively listened to either a T2 word [t?u2 je4] /t?u2 je4/, a T3 word [t?u3 je4] /t?u3 je4/, a sandhi word [t?u2 jen3] /t?u3 jen3/, or a mix of T3 and sandhi word standards. The deviant in each condition was a T2 word [t?u2]. Results showed an MMN only in the T2 and T3 conditions but not in the Sandhi or Mix conditions. All conditions also yielded omission MMNs. This pattern cannot be explained based on the surface forms of standards and deviants; rather these data suggest an underspecified or underlying T3 stored linguistic representation used in spoken word processing.