Asymmetric Influence of Vocalic Context on Mandarin Sibilants: Evidence From ERP Studies.

ABSTRACT: In the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether the HEIGHT features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words ([sa] ∼ [ʂa] and [su] ∼ [ʂu]) contrasting in vowel HEIGHT ([LOW] vs. [HIGH]). Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions (/standard/_[deviant]: /sa/_[ʂa] ∼ /ʂa/_[sa] and /su/_[ʂu] ∼ /ʂu/_[su]). In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model, asymmetric patterns of processing were found in the [su] ∼ [ʂu] word pair where both the MMN (mismatch negativity) and LD

SUBMITTER: Meng Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8100247 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature