Effects of Phonetic Similarity in the Identification of Mandarin Tones.

Tonal languages differ in how they use phonetic correlates e.g. average pitch height and pitch direction, for tonal contrasts.

Thai lexical tone perception in native speakers of Thai, English and Mandarin Chinese: an event-related potentials training study.

Background: Tone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequency (F0, pitch) to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have shown that native speakers of a non-tone language have difficulty discriminating among tone contrasts and are sensitive to different F0 dimensions than speakers of a tone language. The aim of the present ERP study was to investigate the effect of language background and training on the non-attentive processing of lexical tones.

Effects of native language and training on lexical tone perception: an event-related potential study.

Tone languages such as Thai use pitch differences to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have reported that naïve listeners can discriminate among lexical tones, but that native language background affects performance. The present study uses ERPs to determine whether native speakers of a tone language (Mandarin Chinese) and of a non-tone language (English) differ in their pre-attentive discrimination among Thai lexical tones, and whether training has a different effect in these two language groups.