Speaker: Agnes Bi (MIT)
Title: Mandarin tone identification in whispered speech
Time: Monday, March 7th, 5pm – 6:30pm
Abstract: Phonetic contrasts are represented via multiple acoustic dimensions and signaled by multiple cues simultaneously. In the case of tones, it has been long established that fundamental frequency F0 serves as their primary cue (Gandour 1978, Yip 2002), and F0 information is sufficient for successful tonal identification (Abramson 1978). On the other hand, many studies have shown that secondary cues still contribute substantially to the identification process, and that listeners seem to be sensitive to a weighted combination of various acoustic dimensions (Di Paolo and Faber 1990, Wassink 2006, Zellou, Scarborough, and Kemp 2020, a.o.). In this project, I am interested in how much information listeners can extract from the secondary cues alone. More precisely, when listeners are deprived of a key dimension of cues, how do they utilize the remaining acoustic features? I will report findings from an experiment conducted over IAP that looks into the identification of Mandarin tones in whispered speech. The results seem a little mysterious, if not counterintuitive, and I would like to get some help with how to make sense of them.