Yang Tzu-Hsuan, Jin Shao-Jie, Lu Yu-An
Department of Linguistics, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, United States.
Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Front Psychol. 2022 Jul 22;13:836865. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.836865. eCollection 2022.
While the Ganong lexicality effect has been observed for phonemic and tonal categorization, the effects of frequency and markedness are less clear, especially in terms of tonal categorization. In this study, we use Mandarin Chinese to investigate the effects of lexicality, tone frequency and markedness. We examined Mandarin speakers' tonal categorization of tokens on all possible tonal continua with one end being a word and the other being a tonotactic gap (i.e., an unattested syllable-tone combination). The results of a forced-choice identification experiment showed a general bias against the gap endpoints, with the noted exception of continua involving T4 (X), the most frequent lexical tone. Specifically, when T4 served as the gap endpoint, no obvious bias against it was observed regardless of its lexical status. Moreover, on the T3-T4 continua, there was an apparent bias against T3 (X), the tone with the most complex contour, again, regardless of lexicality, suggesting a strong markedness effect. Taken together, the results of this study show the individual effects of lexicality, tone frequency and markedness, as well as their interactions, which contribute to our understanding of tonal categorization in relation to lexical statistics (tone frequency) and phonology (markedness).
虽然在音素和声调分类中已观察到加农词汇性效应，但频率和标记性的影响尚不清楚，尤其是在声调分类方面。在本研究中，我们使用汉语普通话来探究词汇性、声调频率和标记性的影响。我们考察了说普通话者对所有可能的声调连续体上的语音单元的声调分类，连续体一端是一个单词，另一端是一个声调组合间隙（即未出现过的音节 - 声调组合）。一项强制选择识别实验的结果显示，总体上对间隙端点存在偏向，涉及最频繁的词汇声调T4（阴平）的连续体是个明显例外。具体而言，当T4作为间隙端点时，无论其词汇状态如何，都未观察到对它有明显偏向。此外，在T3 - T4连续体上，无论词汇性如何，对具有最复杂声调轮廓的T3（上声）存在明显偏向，这表明存在强烈的标记性效应。综合来看，本研究结果显示了词汇性、声调频率和标记性的个体效应及其相互作用，这有助于我们理解与词汇统计（声调频率）和音系学（标记性）相关的声调分类。
