Volume 82, Issue 5

Previous studies have found that musicians typically discriminate Mandarin tones better than non-musicians. However, the relationship between musical experience and tone perception is unclear. In the current study, 39 monolingual native English speakers with no previous experience of tone languages and a range of musical backgrounds (non-musicians and amateur musicians) completed 6 tasks, including lexical tone identification, working memory, test of first language (L1) and second language (L2) segmental perception and the Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index which measures musical ability and experience. Results indicated that tone identification was significantly correlated with music training, musical ability, and pitch discrimination. However, a path analysis showed that pitch discrimination and musical ability, but not music training, directly influenced tone identification. Music training had a positive direct influence on pitch discrimination and musical ability, and indirectly influences tone identification via these mediators. Follow-up multivariate multiple regression showed that different tones are affected differently: pitch discrimination ability mainly influenced identification of Tones 3 and 4, while musical ability significantly influenced Tones 1 and 4. Overall, naïve, non-tone language speakers do not need music training or a musical background to be able to identify Mandarin tones with a high degree of accuracy.

Local differentiation and innovation in spoken Mandarin are now ubiquitous in metropolises in China, accelerated by the widespread promotion of the national lingua franca Standard Mandarin. This paper examines the lexical tones of Plastic Mandarin, a newly crystallised urban Mandarin dialect in Changsha, where the dominant regional variety has been Changsha Xiang. This paper establishes the lexical tone system for Plastic Mandarin using Growth Curve Analysis and explores its development by comparing its tones with those of Changsha produced by the same group of multilingual speakers, employing Generalised Additive Mixed Modelling. The findings show that, while Plastic Mandarin shares the same tone categories as Standard Mandarin, it features distinctive f0 patterns, some of which closely resemble their corresponding Changsha tones. These f0 patterns, imbued with regional identity, are likely motivated by phonetic variation, systemic constraints, social biases, and language contact. The case of Plastic Mandarin may exemplify contact-induced tonal contour changes in forming new Mandarin varieties.

This study investigates the perception of the consonant length distinction in Italian by first-language (L1), heritage (HS) and second-language (L2) speakers in Australia. We wished to investigate whether Italian HS and L2 speakers perceive gemination differently from L1 Italian speakers and determine if there are any differences between these groups. We conducted a perceptual experiment based on the identification of word-medial geminates in three minimal pairs (/ˈpapa/-/ˈpappa/, /ˈfata/-/ˈfatta/, /ˈpaka/-/ˈpakka/) by three speaker groups: Italian L1, L2, and HS. Results show that while L1 listeners have a solid perceptual awareness of singletons versus geminates based on consonant and vowel duration and the associated C/V ratio, HS and L2 show much less reliance on these cues. At the same time, HS appear to perceive the singleton-geminate contrast differently from both Italian L1 and L2, falling somewhere in between, a result consistent with their level of exposure to Italian (less than L1 and more than L2) over their lifetimes.