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Real-Time Correlates of Phonological Quantity Reveal Unity of Tonal and Non-Tonal Languages
Authors:Juhani J?rvikivi  Martti Vainio  Daniel Aalto
Affiliation:1. Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.; 2. Institute of Behavioral Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.; 3. Institute of Mathematics, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.;Stanford University, United States of America
Abstract:Discrete phonological phenomena form our conscious experience of language: continuous changes in pitch appear as distinct tones to the speakers of tone languages, whereas the speakers of quantity languages experience duration categorically. The categorical nature of our linguistic experience is directly reflected in the traditionally clear-cut linguistic classification of languages into tonal or non-tonal. However, some evidence suggests that duration and pitch are fundamentally interconnected and co-vary in signaling word meaning in non-tonal languages as well. We show that pitch information affects real-time language processing in a (non-tonal) quantity language. The results suggest that there is no unidirectional causal link from a genetically-based perceptual sensitivity towards pitch information to the appearance of a tone language. They further suggest that the contrastive categories tone and quantity may be based on simultaneously co-varying properties of the speech signal and the processing system, even though the conscious experience of the speakers may highlight only one discrete variable at a time.
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