Processing Spoken Chinese: The Role of Tone Information

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Abstract
Vowel and tone monitoring tasks were used to investigate the role of tone information in processing Mandarin. In Experiment 1, participants monitored for a tone-plus-vowel combination (tone 2-/a/). Both existent (known) and non-existent syllables contained targets and monitoring reaction times showed faster monitoring times for existent syllable carriers. Non-target bearing existent syllables mismatched on either the vowel or the tone and showed faster responses for vowel mismatch stimuli. This finding supports a perceptual advantage for vowel information. In Experiment 2, separate vowel and tone monitoring tasks were used for target syllables that occurred phrase-finally in idiomatic (highly constraining) phrases or neutral semantic context. In the neutral context, vowel monitoring was faster than tone monitoring. In contrast, highly predictive contexts showed a tone advantage. Experiment 3 used idiomatic contexts that did or did not contain a mismatching tone in the penultimate syllable. Mismatching tones were very similar to or highly distinct from the intended tone and both tone and vowel monitoring reaction times showed graded effects based on similarity of the mismatch. A modified version of the TRACE model for tone languages that includes a separate level or representation for tones that permit graded activation and highly interconnected syllable representations is discussed.

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