(A)Symmetry in vowel features in verbs and pseudoverbs: ERP evidence

Mismatch negativity (MMN) as an index of asymmetric processing of consonant duration in fake Mandarin geminates

Unlike languages where consonant duration is used contrastively to distinguish word meanings, long consonants in Mandarin Chinese only occur across morpheme boundaries as a result of concatenation and are referred to as fake geminates. To investigate whether Mandarin speakers employ duration contrast to differentiate fake Mandarin geminates and corresponding singletons as well as the underlying pattern of the processing, two auditory oddball tasks were carried out to measure the component of MMN, an index of the automatic detection of deviant stimulus. Mandarin pseudoword pairs which differ only in the duration of the medial consonant ([an1 an1] ∼ [an1 nan1] vs. [an2 an2] ∼ [an2 nan2]) were used as stimuli. An asymmetric pattern of brain activation was observed where the singleton deviant in the context of geminate words elicited higher MMNs than in the reversed condition. These findings are in line with earlier research suggesting that the singleton is unspecified for a moraic representation, while the geminate is specified. Mandarin speakers can employ duration contrast to distinguish fake geminates and corresponding singletons; furthermore, the processing of fake concatenated geminates in contrast to singletons is similar to that of real geminates and corresponding singletons.

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Mandarin speakers use durational cues to differentiate fake geminate/singleton contrast.

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The contrast is represented asymmetrically with a geminate specified for its length with a mora while a singleton is not.

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Asymmetric processing pattern between fake geminate/singleton contrast was found for word pairs with different tones.

Z. Wynne H, Lahiri A. Asymmetric Influence of Vocalic Context on Mandarin Sibilants: Evidence From ERP Studies

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 LDN (late discriminative negativity) components were more negative in /su/[ʂu] (mismatch) than in /ʂu/[su] (no mismatch), suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH] from the vowel [u] to [ʂ] on the surface. In the [sa] ∼ [ʂa] pair, however, symmetric negativities (for both MMN and LDN) were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW] from [a] to [ʂ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments.