Do you say what you hear? Perception-production link of a phoneme contrast in Singapore Mandarin

• Main Authors: Goh, Hannah Letitia, Styles, Suzy J.
• Other Authors: Interdisciplinary Graduate School (IGS)
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology::Consciousness and cognition; Humanities::Linguistics::Psycholinguistics; Speech Production; Perception-Production Link
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168088; https://escholarship.org/uc/cognitivesciencesociety/policies
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Existing studies have suggested that there may be a link between perception and production of speech sounds. In this paper we examine this link using data collected on Singapore English-Mandarin bilingual adults. We used a 2AFC task to measure perception of the Singapore Mandarin [tsʰuə́n]-[ʈʂʰuə́n] alveolar-retroflex contrast, and measured production using centre of gravity (CoG) measurements on speech recordings of alveolar and retroflex words. We found that a perception-production link may exist in our participants, with participants who exhibit less retroflexion in speech showing less sensitivity to retroflexion in ambiguous speech sounds.