36x48 Horizontal Poster

1
Phonological Neutralization and the
Representation of Lexical Tones in
Mandarin-speaking Toddlers Jun Gao 1, Rushen Shi
2, Aijun Li 3 gaojungscass_at_126.com,
shi.rushen_at_uqam.ca, liaj_at_cass.org.cn

• Background
• Infants and toddlers have detailed
  representations for their known vocabulary items
• Consonants (e.g., Swingley Aslin, 2000
  Fennel Werker, 2003 Halle de
  Boysson-Bardie, 1996)
• Vowels (e.g., Mani Plunkett, 2007)
• No study has examined the nature of
  representations of lexical tones during early
  vocabulary development
• Lexical tone contrasts are perceived by
  tone-learning infants at the preverbal stage
  (e.g., Gao, Shi, Li, 2010 Mattock Burnham
  2006 Tsao, 2008)
• Lexical tones in Mandarin Tone 2 Tone 3
  neutralization
• Four tones (See Fig. 1)
• Tone 1 (high level)
• Tone 2 (high rising)
• Tone 3 (low dipping)
• Tone 4 (high falling)

• Experiment 1
• Hypotheses
• ? If toddlers lack the full knowledge of the Tone
  2-Tone 3 sandhi rule, the two phonemic tones may
  be represented as free variations (i.e.,
  non-distinguishable) in the lexicon
• ? If toddlers have acquired the Tone 2-Tone 3
  sandhi rule (i.e., knowing that Tone 2 and Tone 3
  are phonemic and are only neutralized in specific
  context), they should have distinctive
  representations for the two tones.
• Methods
• Participants 16 Mandarin - learning toddlers
  19-29 months old
• Speech stimuli
• Four monosyllabic key familiar words, two in Tone
  2 and two in Tone 3
• Tone 2 (rising tone) yang2 (sheep), chuang2
  (bed)
• Tone 3 (low dipping tone) ma3 (horse), wan3
  (bowl)
• The Tone 2 and Tone 3 targets were in a
  non-neutralizable context in this study
• Procedure
• Intermodal preferential looking procedure (See
  Fig. 2)
• Two side-by-side pictures of familiar words per
  trial (6.5 secs) 24 trials
• Two test trial types
• Correct pronunciation (CP)

• General Discussion
• Experiment 1 2 taken together, toddlers showed
• ? No distinctive lexical representations for Tone
  2 versus Tone 3 (neutralizable in one specific
  context)
• ? No distinctive lexical representations for Tone
  2 versus Tone 4 (non-neutralizale contrast)
• ? No distinctive lexical representations for Tone
  3 versus Tone 4 (non-neutralizale contrast)
• Preverbal tone-learning infants can perceive
  lexical contrasts in Mandarin and Thai (Gao, Shi,
  Li, 2010 Mattock Burnham, 2006 Tsao, 2008).
  
• Possible explanation for the non-discrimination
  of tonal contrasts
• ? The present task not sensitive enough
  familiar-familiar pairings
• Subsequent experiment
• A more sensitive task familiar unfamiliar
  pairings (White Morgan, 2008) preliminary
  results show an MP effect for tonal contrasts
  that are never subject to neutralization (Tone 2
  vs. Tone 4 Tone 3 vs. Tone 4).
• References

Experiment 2
Do toddlers distinctively represent tonal
contrasts that are not subject to neutralization?

• Methods
• Participants 18 Mandarin - learning toddlers
  19-29 months old
• Speech stimuli
• The monosyllabic key familiar words of Experiment
  1
• Tone2 (rising tone) yang2 (sheep), chuang2
  (bed)
• Tone3(low dipping tone) ma3 (horse), wan3
  (bowl)
• Procedure
• Intermodal preferential looking procedure
• Two side-by-side pictures of familiar words per
  trial (6.5 secs) 24 trials

• Do lexical-tone-learning toddlers
• possess distinctive tonal representations
• for familiar words?
• Does tonal neutralization affect
• toddlers tonal representations of
• familiar words?