Psychological and Brain Sciences Colloquium

Alan Yu, William Colvin Professor and Chair, Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago

Variation in Tone-Duration Interaction from Typological, Behavioral, and Neural Perspectives

Phonetically, tone (the contrastive use of pitch) and segmental/syllable duration are often closely connected: syllables with contour tones frequently take longer to produce than those with level tones, and syllables with low tones are longer than those with high tones. However, contour tones are more phonologically restricted across languages compared to level tones, suggesting distinct pathways for the phonologization of these tones and their interaction with duration.

Previous research has primarily focused on perceptual explanations for this asymmetry, but the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This talk presents the findings of a study investigating variation in duration perception across different pitch dynamics and listeners. Specifically, the study examined variation in subcortical encoding of speech sounds in the brainstem using listeners' frequency-following responses (FFRs) to these sounds. We propose that the variation in the influence of pitch dynamics on listeners' perception of syllable duration may be linked to differences in the neural processing of different pitch dynamics.