Statistical Speech Segmentation in Tone Languages: The Role of Lexical Tones

Research has demonstrated distinct roles for consonants and vowels in speech processing. For example, consonants have been shown to support lexical processes, such as the segmentation of speech based on transitional probabilities (TPs), more effectively than vowels. Theory and data so far, however,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language and speech 2018-03, Vol.61 (1), p.84-96
Main Authors: Gómez, David M., Mok, Peggy, Ordin, Mikhail, Mehler, Jacques, Nespor, Marina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Adolescent
Adult
Cantonese
Consonants
Cues
Female
Humans
Lexical processing
Male
Mandarin
Models, Statistical
Native Speakers
Phonetics
Pitch Discrimination
Pitch Perception
Russian language
Segmentation
Speech
Speech Acoustics
Speech Perception
Tone
Voice Quality
Vowels
Young Adult
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Summary:Research has demonstrated distinct roles for consonants and vowels in speech processing. For example, consonants have been shown to support lexical processes, such as the segmentation of speech based on transitional probabilities (TPs), more effectively than vowels. Theory and data so far, however, have considered only non-tone languages, that is to say, languages that lack contrastive lexical tones. In the present work, we provide a first investigation of the role of consonants and vowels in statistical speech segmentation by native speakers of Cantonese, as well as assessing how tones modulate the processing of vowels. Results show that Cantonese speakers are unable to use statistical cues carried by consonants for segmentation, but they can use cues carried by vowels. This difference becomes more evident when considering tone-bearing vowels. Additional data from speakers of Russian and Mandarin suggest that the ability of Cantonese speakers to segment streams with statistical cues carried by tone-bearing vowels extends to other tone languages, but is much reduced in speakers of non-tone languages.
ISSN:0023-8309
1756-6053
DOI:10.1177/0023830917706529