Leiden University Student Repository

Yu, Luge (2024)

Selective Adaptation in the Perception of Mandarin Chinese Tones

Bachelor thesis | Taalwetenschap (BA)

Speech production varies among individuals, having an effect on both segments (vowels and consonants) and suprasegmental properties (prosody). Previous literature has shown that listeners can adapt to variability in the speech production of segments. This study explores whether listeners can also adapt to variability in the production of suprasegments as lexical tones. Our experiment demonstrates a selective adaptation effect in lexical tone perception: repeatedly hearing Mandarin tone1 syllables biased perception of a subsequent tone continuum towards more tone2 responses. Moreover, the selective adaptation effects generalize to novel syllables, especially with onsets dif- ferent from the ones during the exposure. These findings demonstrate that listeners adapt flexibly to variability in the suprasegmental properties of speech, enhancing our understanding of the role of listener adaptation in speech perception.

Selective Adaptation

Perception

Mandarin Chinese

Tone

Author

Yu, Luge

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language & Cognition

Supervisors

Chen, Y.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en