Fan Shanshan, Li Aijun, Chen Ao
School of Preparatory Education, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China.
Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2018 Mar 23;9:322. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00322. eCollection 2018.
Neutral tone (T0) is a special tone form in Mandarin that contains tonal and stress information. Compared with canonical tones, T0 has a much shorter duration and reduced pitch contour. Its tonal contour is determined by the preceding canonical tone. However, not much is known about the perception of tonal and stress information in T0. In the current study, we investigate (1) whether T0 can be perceived as lexically unstressed by stress-language listeners; and (2) how Mandarin (tone language)- and Dutch (stress language)-learning infants perceive T0. Three experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, Dutch adults identified T0 as unstressed when presented with disyllabic sequences ending in T0. In Experiment 2, we used the visual fixation paradigm to test 4- to 6-month-old and 10- to 12-month-old Dutch and Mandarin infants on pseudoword discrimination (/pan1san4/ [high-level + high-falling] and /pan1san0/ [high-level + mid-falling]). T4 and T0 each exhibit a similar falling contour. The results show that (1) after being habituated to neutral tone sequences (/pan1san0/), Dutch infants discriminated the T1T0-T1T4 contrast; and (2) neither age groups of Mandarin infants discriminated the tone contrast. Assuming Mandarin infants' lack of discrimination might be due to the similar F0 contours, we tested Mandarin infants in Experiment 3 using a more salient contrast, /pan1san2/ (high-level + mid-rising) and /pan1san0/. While no overall discrimination was observed, those who were habituated to /pan1san0/ demonstrated discrimination. The continuous discrimination of Dutch infants suggests that they might process neutral-canonical tone contrast as lexical stress rather than as tonal information. Overall, Mandarin infants' failure implies that the representation of T0 is not complete during their 1st year of life; the acquisition of tonal categories may therefore take longer than we expected.
轻声（T0）是普通话中一种特殊的声调形式，包含声调与重音信息。与标准声调相比，轻声的时长更短，音高轮廓也有所缩减。其音高轮廓由前一个标准声调决定。然而，关于轻声中声调与重音信息的感知，目前所知甚少。在本研究中，我们探究：（1）重音语言的听众是否会将轻声感知为词汇上的非重读音节；（2）学习普通话（声调语言）和荷兰语（重音语言）的婴儿如何感知轻声。我们进行了三项实验。实验1中，荷兰成年人在听到以轻声结尾的双音节序列时，会将轻声识别为非重读音节。实验2中，我们使用视觉注视范式，对4至6个月大以及10至12个月大的荷兰和中国婴儿进行假词辨别测试（/pan1san4/ [高平 + 高降]和/pan1san0/ [高平 + 中降]）。T4和T0各自呈现出相似的降调轮廓。结果表明：（1）在习惯了轻声序列（/pan1san0/）后，荷兰婴儿能够辨别T1T0 - T1T4的差异；（2）两个年龄段的中国婴儿均无法辨别声调差异。鉴于中国婴儿缺乏辨别能力可能是由于F0轮廓相似，我们在实验3中使用了更为显著的对比，/pan1san2/（高平 + 中升）和/pan1san0/，对中国婴儿进行测试。虽然未观察到总体上的辨别能力，但习惯了/pan1san0/的婴儿表现出了辨别能力。荷兰婴儿的持续辨别能力表明，他们可能将轻声 - 标准声调的差异作为词汇重音而非声调信息进行处理。总体而言，中国婴儿的失败意味着在其生命的第一年中，轻声的表征并不完整；因此，声调类别的习得可能比我们预期的时间更长。
