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Dissociation of tone and vowel processing in M andarin idioms
Author(s) -
Hu Jiehui,
Gao Shan,
Ma Weiyi,
Yao Dezhong
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2012.01406.x
Subject(s) - vowel , psychology , dissociation (chemistry) , tone (literature) , n400 , mismatch negativity , word (group theory) , speech recognition , linguistics , audiology , event related potential , cognition , computer science , electroencephalography , chemistry , neuroscience , medicine , philosophy
Using event‐related potentials, this study measured the access of suprasegmental (tone) and segmental (vowel) information in spoken word recognition with M andarin idioms. Participants performed a delayed‐response acceptability task, in which they judged the correctness of the last word of each idiom, which might deviate from the correct word in either tone or vowel. Results showed that, compared with the correct idioms, a larger early negativity appeared only for vowel violation. Additionally, a larger N400 effect was observed for vowel mismatch than tone mismatch. A control experiment revealed that these differences were not due to low‐level physical differences across conditions; instead, they represented the greater constraining power of vowels than tones in the lexical selection and semantic integration of the spoken words. Furthermore, tone violation elicited a more robust late positive component than vowel violation, suggesting different reanalyses of the two types of information. In summary, the current results support a functional dissociation of tone and vowel processing in spoken word recognition.