Languages can use a common repertoire of vocal sounds to signify distinct meanings. In
tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, pitch contours of syllables distinguish one …

Mandarin Chinese tones are known to be difficult for second language learners. A large
body of research has examined non-native perception of tones, and may provide useful and …

Linguistic and musical pitch provide an analytic window to evaluate how neural
representations of important pitch attributes of a sound undergo transformation from early …

Neurobiology of Language explores the study of language, a field that has seen tremendous
progress in the last two decades. Key to this progress is the accelerating trend toward …

This study examines the putative benefits of explicit phonetic instruction, high variability
phonetic training, and their effects on adult nonnative speakers' Mandarin tone productions …

It is commonly believed that second language (L2) acquisition of lexical tones presents a
major challenge for learners from nontonal language backgrounds. This belief is somewhat …

English speakers' perception of word-stress in Spanish was compared to that of native
Spanish controls. All participants performed a word-stress detection task in Spanish …

Prosody is an umbrella term used to cover a variety of interconnected and interacting
phenomena, namely stress, rhythm, phrasing, and intonation. The phonetic expression of …

Some prior investigations suggest that tone perception is flexible, reasonably independent
of native phonology, whereas others suggest it is constrained by native phonology. We …

This study examined how maturation and the size of deviance affect the development of
mismatch responses to Mandarin lexical tones by a multi-deviant oddball paradigm with …