1. Background

1. Lexical Tone Perception in Non-tone-learning Infants Jun Gao 1, Rushen Shi 2, Aijun Li 3 gaojungscass@126.com, shi.rushen@uqam.ca, liaj@cass.org.cn • 1. Background • Evidence of phonetic perception during the first year of life: from language-universal listeners to native listeners: • Consonants and vowels: •  Infants perceive both native and non-native contrasts during the initial months after birth; •  Decline in perception of non-native contrasts during the second half of the first year • (e.g., Werker & Tees, 1984; Polka & Werker, 1994) • Lexical tones: •  English-learning infants discriminated Thai rising and falling tones, and rising and low tones at 6 months, but this perception declined by 9 months; performance of rising and low tone contrast was poorer for both ages (Mattock & Burnham, 2006); •  English- and French-learning infants discriminated Thai rising tone and low tone at 4- and 6- months, but no longer do so by 9 months (Mattock et al., 2008). •  Chinese-learning infants discriminated Thai rising tone and falling tone, rising tone and low tone at both 6 months and 9 months (Mattock & Burnham, 2006). 5. Discussion Infants were sensitive to lexical tone contrasts early in infancy (at 4 months), despite lack of lexical tone exposure in their input. But the level of their categorization ability depended on acoustical/phonetic salience: Tone 2 vs. Tone 3 contrast is more salient due to the creaky phonation for Tone 3. At 11 months, non-tonal infants declined in their categorization of Tone 2 vs. Tone 3 as they no longer perceive the creaky phonation as linguistically important (creaky phonation is a non-linguistic property in their native language). At 11 months, non-tonal infants perceived Tone 1 and Tone 4 as different intonation patterns; Tone 4 is compatible in pitch with the most frequent intonation in their native language. 3.3 Procedure Visual habituation – switch procedure Fig. 2. Layout of the testing room and the control room Habituation Phase: Multiple exemplars of one of the two tones in a pair; 50% habituation criterion Test Phase: Same trial: new multiple exemplars of the habituated tone Different trial: multiple exemplars of the contrasting tone • 6. Conclusion •  Categorization of lexical tones at 4 months of age by non-tone-learning infants depends on acoustical/phonetic saliency: the more salient the acoustic/phonetic distinction, the better the categorization performance. •  Lexical tone perception is different from consonant and vowel perception. Since pitch is the acoustic/phonetic correlate for both lexical tones and intonations, non-tonal infants readily perceive pitch in lexical tones that match the intonational characteristics of their native language. 4. Results 2. The Present Study – Goal We examined whether the perception of lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese by non-tone-learning infants follows the same pattern of reorganization as that found for Thai tones. 3. Method 3.1 Participants Canadian French-learning 4.5m Tone 2 vs. Tone 3; 16 infants Tone 1 vs. Tone 4; 16 infants 11m Tone 2 vs. Tone 3; 16 infants Tone 1 vs. Tone 4; 16 infants 3.2 Speech stimuli Two tonal pairs in Mandarin Chinese: Tone 2 (high rising) vs. Tone 3 (low dipping); phonetic cues -- pitch & creaky phonation Tone 1 (high level) vs. Tone 4 (high falling) (See Fig. 1); phonetic cues -- pitch References Mattock, K., & Burnham, D. (2006). Chinese and English infants' tone perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization. Infancy, 10(3), 241-265. Mattock, K., Molnar, M., Polka, L., & Burnham, D. (2008). The developmental course of lexical tone perception in the first year of life. Cognition, 106(3), 1367-1381. Polka, L., & Werker, J. F. (1994). Developmental changes in perception in non-native vowel contrasts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 20, 421-435. Werker, J. F., & Tees, R. C. (1984a). Phonemic and phonetic factors in adult cross-language speech perception. Journal of Acoustical Society America, 75(6), 1866-1878. Acknowledgement This work was supported by a State Scholarship of China to the first author, the Social sciences foundation and the CASS Key project funds to the third author, and grants from NSERC, SSHRC and CFI to the second author. Affiliations 1.3.Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China 2.Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada Tone 2 versus Tone 3:  4 months -- categorical discrimination;  11 months -- no categorical discrimination Tone 1 versus Tone 4: 4 months – a tendency of categorical discrimination; 11 months -- improved categorical discrimination Fig. 1 Time-normalized and pitch-normalized F0 contours of the four lexical tones in Mandarin, produced by a female native speaker. (data from Lee Sung Hoon, Graduate School, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)