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The Perception Of Mandarin Tones In "Bubble" Noise By Native And L2 Listeners, Mengxuan Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous studies have revealed the complexity of Mandarin Tones. For example, similarities in the pitch contours of tones 2 and 3 and tones 3 and 4 cause confusion for listeners. The realization of a tone's contour is highly dependent on its context, especially the preceding pitch. This is known as the coarticulation effect. Researchers have demonstrated the robustness of tone perception by both native and non-native listeners, even with incomplete acoustic information or in noisy environment. However, non-native listeners were observed to behave differently from native listeners in their use of contextual information. For example, the disagreement between the end …