Xu, Y. (2004). Understanding tone from the perspective of production and perception. Language and Linguistics, 5, 757-797.
Presentation: Angela
Summary: Sarah
In this study, the author stressed the importance of considering both production and perception effects in tone research. Specifically, he pointed out articulatory constraints when producing tones. That is, in fluent speech, usually speakers are unable to fully realize a tone within its associated syllable due to the fact that pitch requires a certain amount of time to change height or direction. In other words, a tone can be fully realized only when the syllable is long enough. This limit on pitch change thus leads to undershoot of tonal target. Judging from the perspective of perception, tonal undershoot should be less preferred since it causes confusion. Perception experiments, however, showed that for most of the time, subjects were able to identify tones even though they were not presented in their complete tonal shape. Nevertheless, there are still limits on perception – when tones were seriously altered, perception collapsed. In view of these findings, the author thus proposed a model called the Target Approximation model, in which both articulatory and perceptual constrains were incorporated as basic assumptions. According to the author, the model could better explain controversial issues, such as the targets of contour tones, tone sandhi phenomenon, the realization of neutral tone, etc.
Summary: Sarah
In this study, the author stressed the importance of considering both production and perception effects in tone research. Specifically, he pointed out articulatory constraints when producing tones. That is, in fluent speech, usually speakers are unable to fully realize a tone within its associated syllable due to the fact that pitch requires a certain amount of time to change height or direction. In other words, a tone can be fully realized only when the syllable is long enough. This limit on pitch change thus leads to undershoot of tonal target. Judging from the perspective of perception, tonal undershoot should be less preferred since it causes confusion. Perception experiments, however, showed that for most of the time, subjects were able to identify tones even though they were not presented in their complete tonal shape. Nevertheless, there are still limits on perception – when tones were seriously altered, perception collapsed. In view of these findings, the author thus proposed a model called the Target Approximation model, in which both articulatory and perceptual constrains were incorporated as basic assumptions. According to the author, the model could better explain controversial issues, such as the targets of contour tones, tone sandhi phenomenon, the realization of neutral tone, etc.
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