Tone Perception Pattern In Mandarin

The phonemes in a language are identified by native speakers’audio impression, and there are no one-to-one relationships between phonemes and phones. Perception experiments are designed to solve the problem that how human constructs the relationships of phones and phonemes. Currently perception experiments usually adopt the methods of identifying and discriminating in research. We synthesized a number of stimuli in a certain step by changing parameters (such as formant, pitch, duration) to get continua for tested to listen.This article studies the tones of Mandarin. Previous researches mainly used monosyllable stimuli to study tones. Due to the relativity of the tones’pitch in Mandarin, the experiment in this article studied disyllabic words in authentic materials to analyze the categorical perception of the tones in Mandarin. This method can also reduce the disturbance of intonation in monosyllable on pitch.The study chose two series of different disyllable-word pairs with opposite tone category. The words are divided into two groups according to the target character’s position in disyllable:front-contrast continua and back-contrast continua. And the words are also divided into four groups(tone1, tone2, tone3, tone4) based on the different tone category of the referential characters(the syllables with the same consonants, vowels and tones in pairs). We synthesized the target characters with a set of11stimuli which range from9st to19st.by the step of1st. The stimuli that were semi-synthesized in experiment were set according to audio tests of different tone category. Parameters (boundary position, width of boundary, maximum identification rate, categories of perception, peak value in discrimination test and reaction time, etc.) were analyzed via identification and discrimination experiments.This article covers the perception experiments of tone1-tone2, tone1-tone4, tone1-tone3, tone2-tone3, tone4-tone3, different duration and speech and non-speech stimuli.The tone1-tone2experiment confirms the perceptional category of the tone1at the starting position. The tone1-tone4confirms the perceptional category of the tone1at the ending position. The tone1-tone3experiment confirms the perceptional category of pitch level between the tone1and the tone2in Mandarin. This paper analyzes and summarizes the tone1’s perceptional category basing on the data and result of the three experiments.The tone2-tone3experiment confirms the perceptional category of the tone3at the ending position. The tone4-tone3experiment confirms the perceptional category of the tone3at the starting position. Considering with the tone1-tone3experiment, the paper analyzed the tone3’s perceptional category and came to a conclusion.Together with the tone1-tone2experiment which confirms the perceptional category of the tone2at the starting position and the tone2-tone3experiment which confirms the audio category of the tone2at the ending position, the audio category of the tone2is summarized. Also, the experiments of tone1-tone4and tone4-tone3go to a conclusion of the perceptional category of the tone4.Thus, an perception pattern of the tones in Mandarin can be drawn based on the analyses about each tone’s perceptional category.Besides, those factors that might influence the perception of the tones in Mandarin are also concerned about.Based on the experiment about the duration in the tone1-tone3perception, the influence of pitch and duration on the tone1-tone3perception boundary has been analyzed. We mainly discuss the effect of duration on the perception of tone1-tone3. This experiment still divides the language materials into two groups which are analyzed separately. It is shown that the effects of duration differing in these two groups.We also analyze the external factors’influences on the perception of tones in Mandarin. These factors include the choice of words, the subjects’gender, the display order of options and the broadcasting order of stimuli. The analysis is based on the result of the boundary position in the tone2-tone3continuum.Moreover, in the tone2-tone3experiment, the comparison of nonspeech and speech stimuli is analyzed. By using nonspeech stimuli to imitate tones of Mandarin, it is compared the previous experiment of speech with the nonspeech experiment in which intensity and timbre are under controlled. In this way, it is supposed to summarize the influencing factors further and explore some better and more practical experimental methods.It is then clear that the influences of those internal factors, external of language and non-linguistic, on which, we summarize the influencing factors of perception in Chinese tones. Therefore, we hold that except the pitch factors, there are some other influencing factors in perception of Chinese tones, and it differs in degrees of these factors’influences on the perception between different tone categories.