Developmental changes in suprasegmental tonal duration were investigated in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children. Tone durations were acoustically measured in five- and eight-year-old children and adults. Children's tone duration and variability decreased with age. Five-year-olds produced significantly longer tone durations than adults. Adult-like duration patterns existed in all children: Tone 4 was the shortest and tone 3 the longest. Duration differences between tones 2 and 3 became larger between five- and eight-year-olds. Results suggest a prolonged process of tone development beyond establishing phonological contrasts, which can be viewed as a hybrid of physiological production capacities and perceptual learning for maximal contrastivity.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0005892 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
The role of acoustic cues in the checked-unchecked tone merging of the Qixian Jin dialect.
JASA Express Lett
December 2024
Division of Humanities, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong 999077, China.
The weakening/loss of the stop coda in checked tone syllables (also known as "Ru syllable opening") may lead to a subsequent merger of tonal contrasts in Chinese. This study examined the role of acoustic cues in checked-unchecked tone merging in the Qixian Jin dialect by comparing three age groups. Results showed that duration served as a robust cue for the tonal contrast regardless of age, whereas glottalization did not.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLearning and consolidating the contextualized contour representations of tones from F0 sequences and durational variations via transformers.
J Acoust Soc Am
November 2024
Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 407, Taiwan.
Article Synopsis
- The study focuses on a new transformer-based architecture, TNet-Full, designed for classifying Mandarin tones using speech characteristics like fundamental frequency (F0) values and syllable/word boundaries.
- Key components of TNet-Full include a contour encoder, rhythm encoder, and cross-attention mechanisms that enhance the interaction between tone contours and rhythmic information.
- The model shows significant improvements in accuracy—24.4% for read speech and 6.3% for conversational speech—compared to a simpler baseline, indicating better tone recognition through stable temporal organization of syllables.
Chronic Effects of Static Stretching Exercises on Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy in Healthy Individuals: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-Analysis.
Sports Med Open
September 2024
Department of Sport Science, Chair for Health and Physical Activity, Otto-Von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
Background: The chronic effect of static stretching (SS) on muscle hypertrophy is still unclear. This study aimed to examine the chronic effects of SS exercises on skeletal muscle hypertrophy in healthy individuals.
Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in the PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and SPORTDiscus databases up to July 2023.
Individual variability in the use of tonal and non-tonal cues in intonationa).
JASA Express Lett
September 2024
Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Postbus 9103, 6500 HD Nijmegen, The
Greek uses H*, L + H*, and H* + L, all followed by L-L% edge tones, as nuclear pitch accents in statements. A previous analysis demonstrated that these accents are distinguished by F0 scaling and contour shape. This study expands the earlier investigation by exploring additional cues, namely, voice quality, amplitude, and duration, in distinguishing the pitch accents, and investigating individual variability in the selection of both F0 and non-F0 cues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNative language background affects the perception of duration and pitch.
Brain Lang
September 2024
Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. Electronic address:
Estonian is a quantity language with both a primary duration cue and a secondary pitch cue, whereas Chinese is a tonal language with a dominant pitch use. Using a mismatch negativity experiment and a behavioral discrimination experiment, we investigated how native language background affects the perception of duration only, pitch only, and duration plus pitch information. Chinese participants perceived duration in Estonian as meaningless acoustic information due to a lack of phonological use of duration in their native language; however, they demonstrated a better pitch discrimination ability than Estonian participants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!