Question or tone 2? : How language experience and linguistic function guide pitch processing.

Abstract

How does language experience shape pitch processing? Do speakers of tone languages, which use pitch to signal lexical contrasts (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) attend to pitch movements more closely than speakers of intonation languages (e.g., English)? Contradictory findings have been reported in the literature. In the current study, we hypothesize that listeners should be particularly attentive to any pitch information that signals meaningful information in the native language. This includes pitch movements signaling lexical contrasts (present in tone languages only) as well as postlexical contrasts (present in all languages). Both Mandarin and Dutch listeners performed speeded ABX match to sample tasks on the same sets of nonsense words. As predicted, the same pitch movements were attended to differentially by the two language populations depending on the role that information played in the native language. Mandarin speakers were more attentive than Dutch listeners to pitch movements as these signaled potential lexical contrasts in Mandarin (but not Dutch). Importantly, Dutch listeners were more attentive to pitch movements signaling postlexical information than to pitch movements signaling no meaningful information. These findings underscore the importance of postlexical information in online speech processing, and explain apparent contradictions in the literature.