The effect of linguistic experience on perceived vowel duration: Evidence from Taiwan Mandarin speakers

Abstract

Perceived vowel duration is known to be influenced by many factors, including f0 height/movement and ones’ native phonological system. Using multiple experimental paradigms, this study examined whether native tonal rep- resentations and phonetic knowledge of duration associated with different lexical tones may further shape the ways in which vowel duration is perceived. In a perception experiment, Taiwan Mandarin and Korean listeners rated the duration of duration-controlled CV syllables carrying one of the four lexical tones in Mandarin or a reduced T3half (X21). The results showed that perceived vowel duration by Korean listeners, the control group, reflected general perceptual biases: contour tones were rated as longer than level tones, and high-f0 tones were rated as longer than low-f0 tones. Taiwan Mandarin listeners, on the other hand, overestimated the duration of vowels carrying T3 (X214) and T3half, despite their short phonetic duration in Taiwan Mandarin, indicating the sig- nificance of the canonical representation of the complex T3 contour. A spontaneous imitation experiment further supported the canonicity effect: T3half was again hyperarticulated, produced as longer and with similar f0 trajec- tories as T3full, based on its phonological association to T3. Taken together, the findings of the present study sug- gest that the perception of vowel duration is guided by higher-order phonological knowledge from speakers’ linguistic experience as well as by general perceptual biases.