Cover not available
Article published In:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 18:4 (2017) ► pp.622–646

Perception of tones in Mandarin and Dutch adult listeners

| Utrecht University | Western Sydney University
| Utrecht University
| Utrecht University

This paper examines the nature of categorical perception (CP) effects in Mandarin and Dutch adult listeners through identification and discrimination tasks using lexical tonal contrasts and through the CP index analysis. In identification tasks, Mandarin listeners identify tones in accordance with their native tonal categories whereas Dutch listeners do so based on acoustic properties. In discrimination tasks, Dutch listeners outperform Mandarin listeners especially in tonal steps on the continuum falling within the Mandarin tonal category boundary, whereas Mandarin listeners display high sensitivity in discrimination of stimuli falling across the native boundary. The CP index analysis shows a higher degree of CP in Mandarin (categorical perception) than in Dutch (psycho-acoustic perception) listeners.

Keywords: lexical tone, cross-linguistic perception, CP index analysis, categorical perception, psycho-acoustic perception
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Experiment
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Stimuli
    • 2.3Procedure
      • Forced choice identification
      • Open choice identification
      • AX discrimination
      • AXB discrimination
    • 2.4Results and discussion
      • Forced choice identification
      • Open choice identification
      • AX discrimination
      • AXB discrimination
  • 3.The CP index analysis
  • 4.General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Further readings
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 10 October 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.18.4.03liu
References
Abramson, Arthur S.
1979 The noncategorical perception of tone categories in Thai. Frontiers of Speech Communication, ed. by B. Lindblom & S. Öhman, 127–134. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Best, Catherine T., & Winifred Strange
1992 Effects of phonological and phonetic factors on cross-language perception of approximants. Journal of Phonetics 20.31: 305–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul, & David Weenink
2012 Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer [Computer program] version 5.5. Available at [URL] (accessed 1 May 2016).
Broselow, Ellen, Richard R. Hurtig, & Catherine Ringen
1987 The perception of second language prosody. Interlanguage Phonology: The Acquisition of A Second Language Sound System, ed. by Georgette Ioup & Steven H. Weinberger, 350–361. Cambridge: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Brown-Schmidt, Sarah, & Enriqueta Canseco-Gonzalez
2004 Who do you love, your mother or your horse? An event-related brain potential analysis of tone processing in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Psycholinguist Research 33.21: 103–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chen, Ao, Aoju Chen, René Kager, & Patrick Wong
2014 Rises and Falls in Dutch and Mandarin Chinese. Paper presented at The 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, May 13–16, 2014. Nijmegen: Radboud University Nijmegen & the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Chen, Ao, Liquan Liu, & René Kager
2015 Cross-linguistic perception of Mandarin tone sandhi. Language Sciences 481: 62–69. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language. Language, Cognition and Neurosciences 31.61: 751–760. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Content, Alain, & Noémi Perwez
2011 Categorical perception of tones in Vietnamese. Paper presented at the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, August 6–10, 2007. Saarbrücken: Saarland University.
Cutting, James E., & Burton S. Rosner
1976 Discrimination functions predicted from categories of speech and music. Perception & Psychophysics 20.11: 87–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, Christiane, Daniel Swingley, & Janet F. Werker
2007 Native language governs interpretation of salient speech sound differences at 18 months. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.411: 16027–16031. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dupoux, Emmanuel, Christophe Pallier, Núria Sebastián-Gallés, & Jacques Mehler
1997 A destressing “deafness” in French? Journal of Memory and Language 361: 406–421. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dupoux, Emmanuel, Núria Sebastián-Gallés, Eduardo Navarrete, & Sharon Peperkamp
2008 Persistent stress ‘deafness’: the case of French learners of Spanish. Cognition 106.21: 682–706. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Francis, Alexander L., Valter Ciocca, & Brenda Kei Chit Ng
2003 On the (non)categorical perception of lexical tones. Perception & Psychophysics 65.71: 1029–1044. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Francis, Alexander L., Valter Ciocca, Lian Ma, & Kimberly Fenn
2008 Perceptual learning of Cantonese lexical tones by tone and non-tone language speakers. Journal of Phonetics 36.21: 268–294. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gandour, Jackson T.
1978 The perception of tone. Tone: A Linguistic Survey, ed. by Victoria A. Fromkin, 41–76. New York: Academic Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gandour, Jackson T., Donald Wong, & Gary Hutchins
1998 Pitch processing in the human brain is influenced by language experience. NeuroReport 9.91: 2115–2119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gandour, Jackson T., Donald Wong, Li Hsieh, Bret Weinzapfel, Diana Van Lancker, & Gary D. Hutchins
2000 A crosslinguistic PET study of tone perception. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12.11: 207–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gandour, Jackson T., Mario Dzemidzic, Donald Wong, Mark Lowe, Yunxia Tong, Li Hsieh, & Joseph Lurito
2001 Differential neural circuitry underlies the perception of Chinese tone and intonation: an fMRI study. NeuroImage 13.61: 533. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hallé, Pierre A., Yueh-Chin Chang, & Catherine T. Best
2004 Identification and discrimination of Mandarin Chinese tones by Mandarin Chinese vs. French listeners. Journal of Phonetics 32.31: 395–421. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harnad, Steven
1987 Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harrison, Phil
2000 Acquiring the phonology of lexical tone in infancy. Lingua 110.81: 581–616. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hay, Jessica F., Katharine Graf Estes, Tianlin Wang, & Jenny R. Saffran
2015 From flexibility to constraint: the contrastive use of lexical tone in early word learning. Child Development 86.11: 10–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hsieh, Li, Jack Gandour, Donald Wong, & Gary D. Hutchins
2000 A PET study of the perception of Chinese tones. NeuroImage 11.51: 313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huang, Tsan, & Keith Johnson
2010 Language specificity in speech perception: perception of Mandarin tones by native and nonnative listeners. Phonetica 67.41: 243–267. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jun, Sun-Ah, & Cécile Fougeron
2000 A phonological model of French intonation. Intonation: Analysis, Modeling and Technology, ed. by Antonis Botinis, 209–242. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaan, Edith, Christopher M. Barkley, Mingzhen Bao, & Ratree Wayland
2008 Thai lexical tone perception in native speakers of Thai, English and Mandarin Chinese: an event-related potentials training study. BMC Neuroscience 91: 53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Denise, Robert J. Zatorre, Brenda Milner, & Viviane Zhao
2001 A cross-linguistic PET study of tone perception in Mandarin Chinese and English speakers. NeuroImage 13.41: 646–653. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuhl, Patricia K., Feng-Ming Tsao, & Huei-Mei Liu
2003 Foreign-language experience in infancy: effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100.151: 9096–9101. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Chao-Yang
2007 Does horse activate mother? Processing lexical tone in form priming. Language and Speech 50.11: 101–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lee, Lisa, & Howard C. Nusbaum
1993 Processing interactions between segmental and suprasegmental information in native speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese. Perception and Psychophysics 53.21: 157–165. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liberman, A. M., Katherine S. Harris, Jo Ann Kinney, & H. Lane
1961 The discrimination of relative onset-time of the components of certain speech and nonspeech patterns. Journal of Experimental Psychology 61.51: 379–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, Liquan
2014 The Effects of Bilingualism on Infant Language Development: The Acquisition of Sounds and Words. The Netherlands: LOT.Google Scholar
Liu, Liquan, & René Kager
2011 Is perceptual reorganization affected by statistical learning? Dutch infants’ sensitivity to lexical tones. Proceedings of the 35th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, ed. by Nick Danis, Kate Mesh & Hyunsuk Sung, 404–413. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
2013 How bilingualism alters non-tone-learning infants’ tone perception in the first year of life. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, ed. by Sarah Baiz, Nora Goldman & Rachel Hawkes, 231–240. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
2014 Perception of tones by infants learning a non-tone language. Cognition 133.21: 385–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015a Bilingual exposure influences infant VOT perception. Infant Behavior and Development 381: 27–36. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015b Understanding phonological acquisition through phonetic perception: the influence of exposure and acoustic salience. Phonological Studies 181: 51–58.Google Scholar
2016a Perception of a native vowel contrast by Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants: a bilingual perceptual lead. International Journal of Bilingualism 20.31: 335–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016b Is mommy talking to daddy or to me? Exploring parental estimates of child language exposure using the multilingual infant questionnaire. International Journal of Multilingualism 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017a Perception of tones by bilingual infants learning non-tone languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20.31: 561–575. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2017b Enhanced music sensitivity in 9-month-old bilingual infants. Cognitive Processing 18.11: 55–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Under review. The associative word learning of tones by monolingual and bilingual infants learning non-tone languages. Frontiers in Psychology.
Luo, Hao, Jing-Tian Ni, Zhi-Hao Li, Xiao-Ou Li, Da-Ren Zhang, Fan-Gang Zeng, & Lin Chen
2006 Opposite patterns of hemisphere dominance for early auditory processing of lexical tones and consonants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103.511: 19558–19563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macmillan, Neil A., Howard L. Kaplan, & C. Douglas Creelman
1977 The Psychophysics of categorical perception. Psychological Review 84.51: 452–471. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mattock, Karen, & Denis Burnham
2006 Chinese and English infants’ tone perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization. Infancy 10.31: 241–265. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mattock, Karen, Monika Molnar, Linda Polka, & Denis Burnham
2008 The developmental course of lexical tone perception in the first year of life. Cognition 106.31: 1367–1381. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Myers, Scott P.
1987 Tone and the Structure of Words in Shona. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Amherst dissertation.Google Scholar
Peng, Gang, Hong-Ying Zheng, Tao Gong, Ruo-Xiao Yang, Jiang-Ping Kong, & William S.-Y. Wang
2010 The influence of tone language experience on categorical perception of pitch contours. Journal of Phonetics 38.41: 616–624. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Peperkamp, Sharon, Inga Vendelin, & Emmanuel Dupoux
2010 Perception of predictable stress: a cross-linguistic investigation. Journal of Phonetics 38.31: 422–430. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pollack, Irwin, & David Pisoni
1971 On the comparison between identification and discrimination tests in speech perception. Psychonomic Science 24.61: 299–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quam, Carolyn, & Daniel Swingley
2010 Phonological knowledge guides two-year-olds’ and adults’ interpretation of salient pitch contours in word learning. Journal of Memory and Language 62.21: 135–150. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Repp, Bruno H., & Hwei-Bing Lin
1990 Integration of segmental and tonal information in speech perception: a cross-linguistic study. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 87.11: 46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schouten, M. E. H., & A. J. van Hessen
1992 Modeling phoneme perception. I: Categorical perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92.41: 1841–1855. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Singh, Leher, Tam Jun Hui, Calista Chan, & Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
2013 Influences of vowel and tone variation on emergent word knowledge: a cross-linguistic investigation. Developmental Science 17.11: 94–109.Google Scholar
Soto-Faraco, Salvador, Núria Sebastián-Gallés, & Anne Cutler
2001 Segmental and suprasegmental mismatch in lexical access. Journal of Memory and Language 45.31: 412–432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stagray, James R., & David Downs
1993 Differential sensitivity for frequency among speakers of a tone and a nontone language. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 21.11: 143–163.Google Scholar
Sun, Kuo-Chan, & Tsan Huang
2012 A cross-linguistic study of Taiwanese tone perception by Taiwanese and English listeners. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 21.31: 305–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Hessen, A. J., & M. E. H. Schouten
1999 Categorical perception as a function of stimulus quality. Phonetica 561: 56–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Lancker, Diana, & Victoria A. Fromkin
1973 Hemispheric specialization for pitch and “tone”: evidence from Thai. Journal of Phonetics 11: 101–109. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Veenker, Theo J. G.
1998 FEP, a tool for designing and running computerized experiments [Computer software]. Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht University.Google Scholar
Wang, William S.-Y.
1973 The Chinese language. Scientific American 2281: 50–60. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1976 Language Change. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280.11: 61–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Yue, Allard Jongman, & Joan A. Sereno
2001 Dichotic perception of Mandarin tones by Chinese and American listeners. Brain and Language 78.31: 332–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wang, Yue, Dawn M. Behne, Allard Jongman, & Joan A. Sereno
2004 The role of linguistic experience in the hemispheric processing of lexical tone. Applied Psycholinguistics 25.31: 449–466. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Werker, Janet F., & Richard C. Tees
1984 Cross-language speech perception: evidence for perceptual reorganization during the first year of life. Infant Behavior and Development 7.11: 49–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whalen, D. H., & Yi Xu
1992 Information for Mandarin tones in the amplitude contour and in brief segments. Phonetica 49.11: 25–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wu, Xianghua, & Hua Lin
2008 Perception of Mandarin Tones by Mandarin and English Listeners. Journal of Chinese Language and Computing 18.41: 175–187.Google Scholar
Wu, Xianghua, Jung-Yueh Tu, & Yue Wang
2012 Native and nonnative processing of Japanese pitch accent. Applied Psycholinguistics 33.31: 623–641. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Xu, Yisheng, Jackson T. Gandour, & Alexander L. Francis
2006 Effects of language experience and stimulus complexity on the categorical perception of pitch direction. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 120.21: 1063–1074. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yeung, H. Henny, Ke Heng Chen, & Janet F. Werker
2013 When does native language input affect phonetic perception? The precocious case of lexical tone. Journal of Memory and Language 68.21: 123–139. DOI logoGoogle Scholar

Further readings

Henderson, A. I., & S. Nelms
1980 Relative salience of intonation fall and pause as cues to the perceptual segmentation of speech in an unfamiliar language. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 9.21: 147–159. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, Liquan, & René Kager
In press. Dutch infants’ lexical tone perception under distributional learning. Journal of Child Experimental Psychology.
Cited by

Cited by 7 other publications

Liu, Liquan & René Kager
2017. Statistical learning of speech sounds is most robust during the period of perceptual attunement. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 164 ► pp. 192 ff. DOI logo
Liu, Liquan, Jia Hoong Ong, Alba Tuninetti & Paola Escudero
2018. One Way or Another: Evidence for Perceptual Asymmetry in Pre-attentive Learning of Non-native Contrasts. Frontiers in Psychology 9 DOI logo
Liu, Liquan, Chi Yuan, Jia Hoong Ong, Alba Tuninetti, Mark Antoniou, Anne Cutler & Paola Escudero
2022. Learning to Perceive Non-Native Tones via Distributional Training: Effects of Task and Acoustic Cue Weighting. Brain Sciences 12:5 ► pp. 559 ff. DOI logo
Ozburn, Avery, Gianna F Giovio Canavesi & Samuel Akinbo
2023. Perception of ATR in Dàgááre [dàɡáárɪ̀]. Laboratory Phonology 14:1 DOI logo
Toh, Xin Ru, Fun Lau & Francis C. K. Wong
2022. Individual differences in nonnative lexical tone perception: Effects of tone language repertoire and musical experience. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Xie, Pengxuan
2020. Learning Mandarin tones through pitch-time diagrams: A computer-assisted visual approach. Global Chinese 6:2 ► pp. 289 ff. DOI logo
Yu, Keke, Li Li, Yuan Chen, Yacong Zhou, Ruiming Wang, Yang Zhang & Ping Li
2019. Effects of native language experience on Mandarin lexical tone processing in proficient second language learners. Psychophysiology 56:11 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.