Perception of Mandarin Tones: Three-way Interaction of Tasks, Familiarity, and Phonetics

漢語聲調之聽覺：作業、基頻軌跡、及語音三方之交互作用

洪鐘儒(Andrew C.-J. Hung) ； 鍾榮富(Raung-Fu Chung)

《高應科大人文社會科學學報》 12卷1期 (2017/12) Pp. 87-104

摘要

Previous studies have found the perception of lexical tones associated with task types, acoustic/phonetic aspects of the tones, and language experience. But seldom has the interaction of these factors been studied. To fill the void, the present study, with an empirical experiment of 2x2x2 factorial design, investigated the perception of Mandarin tones by the natives of Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan, who discriminated between pairwise tone inputs from the right ear. The pairwise stimuli consisted of familiar tonal contrasts versus unfamiliar contrasts. The stimuli were presented in speech sounds (i.e., lexical tones) versus in non-speech sounds (sinewave pitches). The subjects were required to judge whether pairwise tone tokens fitted into the same tone category (category discrimination) versus whether they were exactly identical (auditory discrimination). The study revealed that the perception of Mandarin tones is influenced significantly by task types and familiarity with the F0 contours. However, the effect of phonetics varies depending on the interaction of task types and familiarity with the F0 contours. The subjects performed better in nonspeech context than in speech context on two conditions: (1) in the category discrimination between familiar tonal contrasts, and (2) in the auditory (non-categorical) discrimination between unfamiliar tonal contrasts.

關鍵字

perception ； Mandarin tone ； discrimination ； phonetics ； F0 contour

並列摘要

過去的研究發現詞彙聲調的感覺和作業型態、語音、及語言經驗有關。但是鮮少探究這三個因子的交互作用。為此，本行為研究採用2x2x2的因子實驗設計來探索這個議題。受試者分辨從右耳輸入的配對的基頻軌跡是否可歸為同類型（類型辨別）或完全一樣（聲音辨別）。配對的方式有兩種:熟悉的聲調對比vs.非熟悉的聲調對比。刺激由兩種方式呈現:語音（真實聲調）vs.非語音（單純音調）。研究結果顯示漢語聲調的聽覺顯著地受到作業型態和基頻軌跡（F0 contour）的熟悉性影響。而語音之影響則視作業型態與熟悉性之交互作用而定。相較於對熟悉的聲調對比之類型辨別和對不熟悉的聲調對比之聲音辨別等兩種語音的情境表現，受試者在非語音情境中的表現較佳。

並列關鍵字

感覺 ； 漢語聲調 ； 辨別 ； 語音 ； 基頻軌跡