The influence of language experience on categorical perception of pitch contours

Previous research on categorical perception of pitch contours has mainly considered the contrast between tone language and non-tone language listeners This study investigates not only the influence of tone language vs non-tone language experience (German vs Chinese) but also the influence of different tone inventories (Mandarin tones vs Cantonese tones) on the categorical perception of pitch contours The results show that the positions of the identification boundaries do not differ significantly across the 3 groups of listeners i e Mandarin Cantonese and German but that the boundary widths do differ significantly between tone language (Mandarin and Cantonese) listeners and non-tone language (German) listeners with broader boundary widths for non tone language listeners In the discrimination tasks the German listeners exhibit only psychophysical boundaries whereas Chinese listeners exhibit linguistic boundaries and these linguistic boundaries are further shaped by the different tone inventories (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved