C.-Y.– 123
Lee
LANGUAGE AND SPEECH, 2007, 50 (1), 101
101
Does Horse Activate Mother?
Processing Lexical Tone
in Form Priming
Chao-Yang Lee
School of Hearing, Speech and Language Sciences,
Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, U.S.A.
Key words
Abstract
Lexical tone languages make up the majority of all known languages of
the world, but the role of tone in lexical processing remains unclear. In
the present study, four form priming experiments examined the role of
lexical tone
Mandarin tones in constraining lexical activation and the time course of
the activation. When a prime and a target were related directly in form (e.g.,
Mandarin
lou3 ‘hug’ — lou2 ‘hall’), competitors that differed from the prime in tone
failed to be activated, indicating the use of tonal information to distinguish
spoken word
between segmentally identical words. When a prime and a target were not
recognition
form-related but were related through a third word that was not actually
presented (e.g., lou3 ‘hug’ — jian4zhu0 ‘building’, where lou3 is form-related
to lou2 ‘hall’, which was semantically related to jian4zhu0), a mismatch in tone prevented activation of minimal tone pairs at 250ms interstimulus interval (ISI) but did not prevent activation
at 50 ms ISI. These results indicate that tonal information is used on-line to reduce the number
of activated candidates, but does not prevent the minimal tone pairs from being activated in the
early phase of lexical activation.
form priming
1 Introduction
Recognizing spoken words constitutes the basis for auditory language comprehension.
To decode a spoken message, a listener extracts segmental and prosodic information
from the acoustic signal and maps it onto some form of internal representation in the
mental lexicon. Cognitive models of spoken word recognition such as Cohort (MarslenWilson, 1987), TRACE (McClelland & Elman, 1986), Neighborhood Activation model
(Luce & Pisoni, 1998), and Shortlist (Norris, 1994) all characterize the mapping as
an activation-competition process (Frauenfelder, 1996; Lively, Pisoni, & Goldinger,
1994; McQueen, Dahan, & Cutler, 2003). However, only Shortlist (Norris, 1994)
Acknowledgments: This research was supported in part by the Corinna Borden Keene Dissertation
Fellowship and by NIH grant DC00142 to Brown University. The author would like to thank
Sheila E. Blumstein for her guidance and Denis Burnham, Annett Schirmer, Arthur Samuel,
and Chilin Shih for their comments on earlier versions of the text.
Address for correspondence. Chao-Yang Lee, School of Hearing, Speech and Language Sciences,
Grover Center W225, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, U.S.A.; e-mail: <[email protected]>.
‘Language and Speech’ is © Kingston Press Ltd. 1958 – 2007
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Lexical tone in form priming
explicitly incorporated prosody as a cue to speech segmentation, which is a precursor
to word recognition. The absence of prosodic specifications in other models most
likely reflects the minor role of prosody for word distinctions in Indo-European
languages. For example, English has few stress minimal pairs such as FORbear and
forBEAR (Cutler, 1986) that contrast solely in lexical stress. For stress contrasts that
involve concurrent segmental changes, listeners may not need to rely on prosodic
information for word recognition.
However, lexically contrastive prosody is used extensively in lexical tone languages.
The information value of lexical tones may be too high to ignore in word recognition
(Cutler & Chen, 1997). In Mandarin Chinese, for example, each syllable (which normally
corresponds to a monosyllabic word or free morpheme) is assigned one of four tones.
Substituting the tone of a syllable changes the meaning of the word or morpheme. For
example, the syllable ma with Tone 1 (a high-level tone, denoted as ma1) means ‘mother’,
whereas ma2 (a mid-rising tone), ma3 (a low-dipping tone), and ma4 (a high-falling
tone) mean ‘hemp’, ‘horse’, and ‘to scorn’, respectively. In other words, lexical tone is
an integral part of a lexical entry as much as segmental structure is.
Since lexical tone is functionally phonemic, is tone used in a similar way as
segmental structure in processing spoken Mandarin words? Intuitively, lexical tone
must be implicated in Mandarin word recognition at some point since each syllable has
a distinct tone and listeners have to rely on tonal information to distinguish between
minimal tone pairs. Fox and Unkefer (1985) found a “lexical effect” on Mandarin
tone categorization (cf. Connine, Clifton, & Cutler, 1987; Ganong, 1980; McQueen,
1991). When presented with series of synthetic tokens that were ambiguous between
two tones, Mandarin listeners gave tone responses that would make an ambiguous
token a real word. Ching (1985) also showed that lip-reading Cantonese words is
much more accurate when fundamental frequency (F 0) information is available.
Nonetheless, the studies by Fox and Unkefer (1985) or Ching (1985) did not answer
how and when tone is implicated in lexical processing. The “off-line” nature of the
tasks did not address whether lexical tone is used as an “access code” in reducing the
number of candidates in the early phase of lexical activation, or as a “phonological
code” to be consulted for word identity verification only after lexical activation is
completed (Cutler, 1986).
A number of studies used “on-line” speeded-response tasks to compare tonal and
segmental processing. Cutler and Chen (1997) found that tone processing in Cantonese
is more error-prone than consonant or vowel processing. Listeners made more lexical
decision errors when presented with nonword items that differed from real words in
tone. In contrast, there were fewer errors when those nonword items differed from
real words in consonant or vowel. In a same-different judgment task, listeners were
also slower and less accurate when the mismatch between two stimulus items was
tone compared to consonant or vowel. Ye and Connine (1999) showed that vowel-tone
monitoring was slower when a stimulus item deviated from the target-bearing syllable
in tone. Cutler and Chen (1997) suggested that the processing difference is due to the
acoustic characteristics of prosodic and segmental information. In particular, tone
is processed later than segmental phonemes because tone is carried by vowels and
cannot arrive earlier than segmental information. Even though listeners process both
tonal and segmental information as soon as they become available, the temporallyLanguage and Speech
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distributed nature of tonal information results in relatively late processing of tone. On
this account, prosodic information may not be processed as efficiently as segmental
information in spoken word recognition.
However, this conclusion has recently been challenged by electrophysiological
evidence showing comparable processing of tonal and segmental information. Schirmer,
Tang, Penney, Gunter, and Chen (2005) presented sentences that contained words
that were semantically congruous or incongruous with the sentential context. Eventrelated potentials (ERPs) elicited by the semantic incongruity as well as traditional
behavioral measures of response time and accuracy were taken. The incongruous
words were constructed by modifying the segmental structure, the tone, or both
segmental structure and tone of a word that would be congruous with the sentential
context. Participants were asked to judge whether or not the sentences they heard were
semantically congruous. The results showed, while the response to tonal violations
was less accurate, tonal and segmental violations elicited comparable time course
and amplitude of the N400-like negativity, a correlate of semantic incongruity. Since
traditional behavioral measures require an explicit response (e.g., pressing buttons),
the less accurate detection of tonal information as opposed to segmental information
found in previous studies (Cutler & Chen, 1997; Ye & Connine, 1999) may reflect
postaccess processes such as response strategies rather than the initial activationcompetition process (Schirmer et al., 2005).
Despite the issue of potential response strategies, much experimental data
regarding spoken word recognition has been accumulated based on behavioral
measures, which are sensitive to aspects of word processing (Schirmer et al., 2005). One
source of such evidence regarding the role of sound structure in spoken word recognition has come from form priming studies (Zwitserlood, 1996). In this experimental
paradigm, listeners are presented with a prime followed by a target that is related to
the prime in phonological form. Listeners are required to make a speeded response to
the target, and the latency and accuracy of the response are used to evaluate the effect
of the form relationship on word recognition. The widespread use of this paradigm
in the segmental literature has generated fairly mixed results and interpretations. In
particular, both facilitatory and inhibitory priming have been found (Zwitserlood,
1996). As Zwitserlood (1996) noted, the direction of form priming effects depends
on factors such as task, interstimulus-interval, proportion of related trials, lexical
status of primes, and position of overlap. In addition, response strategies have been
implicated in the interpretation of facilitatory priming results (Goldinger, Luce,
Pisoni, & Marcario, 1992). Despite these potential methodological issues, facilitation is
normally considered a prelexical effect arising from form-overlap between prime and
target (Radeau, Morais, & Segui, 1995; Slowiaczek & Hamburger, 1992; Slowiaczek
& Pisoni, 1986) and inhibition a lexically-based effect reflecting competition among
activated word candidates (Hamburger & Slowiaczek, 1996; Radeau, Morais, &
Dewier, 1989; Slowiaczek & Hamburger, 1992). Taken together, form priming is
likely to reflect the balance between form-based facilitation and inhibitory lexical
competition (Slowiaczek & Hamburger, 1992; Zhou & Marslen-Wilson, 1995).
Form priming has been used to explore the role of lexical prosody in spoken
word recognition. Cutler and Otake (1999) showed that Japanese words contrasting
minimally in pitch accent did not prime each other in an auditory lexical decision
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Lexical tone in form priming
task. The absence of priming was interpreted as listeners’ successful use of accentual
information to constrain lexical activation. That is, a mismatch in accentual information was used by the listeners to resolve segmental ambiguity in the initial activation
phase, inhibiting the prosodically incompatible candidate. The reasoning is that, if
pitch accent information were not used by the listener to rule out the other member
of the accent pairs, both members would have been treated as homophones and
would have primed each other (cf. Cutler, 1986). In a study of lexical stress in Dutch,
Cutler and Donselaar (2001) found that Dutch words contrasting minimally in lexical
stress did not prime each other. Following the same line of reasoning as in Cutler
and Otake (1999), Cutler and Donselaar (2001) interpreted this result as indicating
listeners’ use of stress information to inhibit activation of the incompatible member
of the stress pair. Similarly, Cooper, Cutler, and Wales (2002) in a study on lexical
stress in English found that a stress mismatch between a disyllabic auditory prime
and a visual target in English did not generate priming. This finding was likewise
interpreted as listeners’ successful use of stress information to inhibit the incompatible
member of the stress pair.
The use of form priming to address the role of lexical tone in word recognition
has been studied in Cantonese. Cutler and Chen (1995, also reported in Chen &
Cutler, 1996) examined the effect of form overlap between disyllabic Cantonese words.
Lexical decision latency was evaluated in prime-target pairs with mismatch in tone
or rhyme in the first or second syllable. The results showed that tone and rhyme had
similar priming effects but the effects varied as a function of the mismatch position:
When the tone or rhyme mismatch was in the second syllable (e.g., ji6liu4 — ji6liu5,
to4fa1— to4foo1), response was slowed down. When the mismatch was in the first
syllable (e.g., to4wa6 — to2wa6, si6yip6 — sue6yip6), response was faster. The authors
attributed the facilitation to prelexical form overlap and the inhibition to lexical
competition. In particular, when the mismatch was in the second syllable, the prime
and target were identical in the first syllable. Therefore, there was inhibition due to
lexical competition. Such inhibition did not exist when the mismatch was in the first
syllable, where facilitation was able to surface due to form overlap in the second syllable.
Using a shadowing task, Yip, Leung, and Chen (1998) examined priming in
monosyllabic Cantonese word pairs overlapping in onset, rhyme, and / or tone. They
found significant facilitation only when the prime-target overlap was in onset+ rhyme,
that is, when the prime and target were minimal tone pairs. Yip (2001) replicated the
1998 study with a smaller proportion of related trials (cf. Goldinger, Luce, Pisoni, &
Marcario, 1992) and found reliable facilitation when the overlap was in onset+ rhyme
or rhyme + tone. It was concluded that Cantonese listeners were more sensitive to
segmental than suprasegmental information, presumably because the tone overlap
did not consistently produce facilitation. On Cutler and colleagues’ account, however,
the onset+ rhyme (i.e., minimal tone pair) priming would not be expected if listeners
were able to use the mismatch in tone to inhibit activation of the tonally incompatible
member. In other words, the findings from Yip et al. (1998) and Yip (2001) were not
consistent with Cutler and colleagues’ notion that tone is part of the lexical “access
code” and that tonal contrasts are processed at the early activation phase of word
recognition (Cutler, 1997; Cutler & Chen, 1997, Cutler, Dahan, & van Donselaar,
1997). Can the findings from Yip et al. (1998) and Yip (2001) generalize to other
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lexical tone languages, suggesting a universal processing difference between lexical
prosodies, or are these results only applicable to Cantonese, suggesting languagespecific properties at work?
The current study extended previous form priming studies on lexical prosody
in three ways. First, existing form priming studies on lexical tone were all conducted
in Cantonese. A different tone language, Mandarin Chinese, was used in the present
study. Secondly, in addition to the direct priming task (Experiments 1 and 2) that
allows a direct comparison with previous studies, the mediated priming task was also
used in the present study (Experiments 3 and 4). In the direct priming paradigm, the
prime and target are directly related in form (e.g., ma3 ‘horse’ — ma1 ‘mother’); in
mediated priming, the prime is not directly related to the target in form (e.g., ma3
‘horse’ — fu4qin0 ‘father’, where 0 denotes an unstressed “neutral” tone), but is formrelated to a third word (ma1 ‘mother’) that is semantically related to the target but is not
actually presented. The motivation for using the mediated priming task was twofold.
First, mediated priming may be less susceptible to participants’ response strategies.
Since the prime and target in direct priming are directly related in form, it may be
easier for participants to detect the form relationships, which could invoke postaccess
processes. In mediated priming, the prime and target are not directly form-related. It
is less likely for participants to develop response strategies based on their detection
of the relationships. Furthermore, effects obtained with mediated priming are more
likely to have a lexical locus. Since the prime and target in mediated priming are not
directly related in form, any priming effect must be mediated through the activation
of a third word that is not actually presented (Zwitserlood, 1996).
Finally, the use of two interstimulus intervals (ISIs) allowed the present
experiments to address not only the role of tonal versus segmental overlap in lexical
activation, but also the time course of the activation. In both variants of the priming
task, two ISIs were used to evaluate the time course of tone processing. The 250 ms
ISI (Experiments 1 and 3) was a direct comparison with Yip (2001). The 50 ms ISI
(Experiments 2 and 4) was selected in light of previous priming studies in the segmental
literature suggesting that priming effects are rapid and short-lived. For example,
Andruski, Blumstein, and Burton (1994) found that subphonetic variation in voice
onset time had an effect on the magnitude of semantic priming at 50 ms but not at
250ms ISI. The time course of the priming effect at 50 versus 250ms ISI has also been
replicated in patients with aphasia (Utman, Blumstein, & Sullivan, 2001).
To evaluate the effects of tonal and segmental overlap in form priming, the primes
and targets selected in the present experiments had four types of relationships. In direct
priming (Experiments 1 and 2), the prime and target shared segmental structure (e.g.,
lou3 ‘hug’— lou2 ‘hall’), tone (e.g., cang2 ‘hide’— lou2 ‘hall’), both segmental structure
and tone (e.g., lou2 ‘hall’— lou2 ‘hall’), or did not overlap at all (e.g., pan1 ‘climb’— lou2
‘hall’). In mediated priming (Experiments 3 and 4), the prime was form-related to a
third word (not actually presented) that is related to the target. The prime and the
third word bore the same relationships as in direct priming, but the targets were
words that are semantically related to the third word (e.g., replacing the target in the
above examples with jian4zhu0 ‘building’). It was predicted that the complete overlap
(tone +segments) would produce facilitatory priming relative to the unrelated baseline.
In addition, if an overlap in tone or segmental structure was sufficient in activating
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Lexical tone in form priming
target representation (Experiments 1 and 2) or the mediating word (Experiments 3
and 4), facilitation would also be expected in these two conditions.
2 Experiment 1
In Experiment 1, the prime and target words had four types of form relationships.
They shared either segmental structure only (S) (e.g., lou3 ‘hug’— lou2 ‘hall’), tone
only (T) (e.g., cang2 ‘hide’— lou2 ‘hall’), both segmental structure and tone (ST) (e.g.,
lou2 ‘hall’ — lou2 ‘hall’), or were unrelated (UR) (e.g., pan1 ‘climb’— lou2 ‘hall’). In
this and the following experiments, all stimuli were presented auditorily. Participants
made lexical decisions on the target and the effect of the prime-target relationships
was evaluated by response time and accuracy.
2.1
Method
2.1.1
Participants
Forty graduate students at Brown University (age: 22 – 30 years; gender: 30 male, 10
female) participated in the experiment. The participants in this and the following
experiments are all native speakers of Mandarin. None reported history of speech or
hearing difficulties. Participants came from various geographical regions in China but
were all screened by the experimenter prior to the experiments to ensure Mandarin
is the first language for all participants.
2.1.2
Materials
Eighty monosyllabic Mandarin words were selected as targets. For each target, four
types of primes were identified: ST primes share both segmental structure and tone
with the target (e.g., lou2 ‘hall’ — lou2 ‘hall’); S primes share only segmental structure
with the target (e.g., lou3 ‘hug’— lou2 ‘hall’); T primes shares only tone with the target
(e.g., cang2 ‘hide’— lou2 ‘hall’); UR primes are not related to the target (e.g., pan1
‘climb’— lou2 ‘hall’). In addition to the word targets, 80 monosyllabic, pronounceable
nonwords were generated. They were paired with the same set of primes and served
as fillers. The complete set of stimuli is listed in Appendix A.
Since monosyllabic homophones are prevalent in Mandarin, an effort was made
to select stimuli from words that did not have homophones, based on a Mandarin
word frequency dictionary (Wang, 1986). The definition of a “word” in Chinese has
been controversial (Packard, 2000). Zhou and Marslen-Wilson (1994, 1995) provided
experimental evidence for a word-level representation in Chinese in addition to the
morpheme-level representation. As a working definition, a “word” in this study has
to have an independent entry and word frequency count in Wang’s (1986) dictionary.
A morpheme without a word frequency entry is therefore not counted as a “word.”
For example, lou3 ‘hug’ is not considered homophonous with the morpheme lou3 ‘a
container made from bamboo’ because the latter, even though a morpheme, does not
have an independent word frequency count in the dictionary. Frequency counts of
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the stimulus words were obtained from this corpus of 1.3 million words. The average
word frequencies for the stimulus words were 257 (ST), 282 (S), 284 (T), and 280 (UR).
There is no statistically significant difference among these averages.
Prime type was intended to be a within-subject factor. However, it was determined that participants were not to hear the same stimulus item more than once
during the experiment. To these ends, four stimulus lists were constructed. For a
given target, each of the four primes was assigned to a different list such that each
list would include all four prime types without repeating any stimulus item in a list.
Although the fillers were paired with the same set of primes, each of the four primes
was similarly assigned to a different list. If a prime was already assigned to a word
target in a given list, the prime would be assigned to a different list to pair with a
nonword target. Therefore, no primes or targets were repeated in any list. In sum, each
list included all 160 targets (80 words and 80 nonwords) with the four types of primes
equally distributed. Therefore, the proportion of related trials was 75% (cf. 75% in
Yip et al., 1998, and 50% in Yip, 2001). Each participant was randomly selected to be
tested on one list only. The four lists were presented equally often across participants
such that the presentation of lists was counterbalanced across participants. The ISI
between the prime and target was 250ms to allow a direct comparison with Yip (2001).
The intertrial interval was three seconds.
2.1.3
Procedure
The stimuli were recorded by a male graduate student at Brown University from
Beijing, China. The recording was made in a sound-treated room with a portable
digital recorder (Sony TCD-D7) and a high-quality microphone (Sony ECM-909).
The recorded speech was digitized onto a Windows PC at a sampling rate of 20kHz
and 14-bit quantization. The stimulus items were identified from the waveform display
of the Brown Lab Interactive Speech System (BLISS; Mertus, 2000) and were saved
as individual audio files. The audio files were then imported to a subject-testing
program, AVRunner of BLISS, for stimulus presentation.
Participants were tested individually in a sound-treated room. They sat in a
testing booth and listened to the stimuli presented by AVRunner through a pair of
headphones (KOSS PRO / 4XTC). The participants were instructed to judge whether
or not the second item in a stimulus pair was a real Mandarin word. They were
asked to respond by pressing the buttons labeled ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ on a custom-made
response box. They were also told to respond as quickly and accurately as possible.
The presentation of trials in a given list was randomized for each participant by
AVRunner. Prior to the test list, a practice list was presented including eight practice
trials (4 with word targets and 4 with nonword targets) to make sure the participants
understood the procedure. An experiment session took approximately 15 mins.
2.2
Results and Discussion
In the present and following experiments, response time, measured from target
onset, and response accuracy to word targets were recorded and exported to the
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Lexical tone in form priming
StatView® software for statistical analysis. Separate analyses of variance (ANOVAs)
were conducted of response time and number of errors, with prime type as the fixed
factor and subject and item as random factors. F statistics obtained from the analyses
by subjects (F1) and by items (F2) are both reported. When a main effect from the
ANOVAs was significant, the Bonferroni post hoc test was used for all six possible
means comparisons to keep the family-wise Type I error rate at 5%.
The top panel of Figure 1 shows the mean response times to targets preceded
by the four types of primes. One-way repeated measure ANOVAs revealed a main
effect of prime type: F 1 (3, 39) = 13.91, p <.0001; F 2 (3, 79) = 17.96, p <.0001. Pair-wise
means comparisons by the Bonferroni test showed significant facilitation (85 ms) by
ST primes compared to the UR baseline (p =.0001 by subjects, p <.0001 by items).
This repetition priming was expected, as ST primes were identical to the targets
in both tone and segmental structure. For S primes, which shared only segmental
structure with the targets, reliable facilitation was found only in item analysis (p <.05)
but not in subject analysis. The result from the subject analysis is in contrast to Yip
(2001), who showed that minimal tone pairs in Cantonese did produce significant
facilitation. For T primes, which shared only tone with the targets, no reliable
priming was found.
In addition to the priming effects relative to the baseline, multiple comparisons
also showed significant or near significant differences among the ST, S, and T conditions. In particular, ST was 64 ms faster than S (p <.05 by subjects, p =.06 by items)
and 129ms faster than T (p <.0001 by subjects and by items). S was 65ms faster than T
(p <.05 by subjects, p <.005 by items). These results suggest that listeners were sensitive
to the phonological difference among the three types of primes.
Participants made few errors in this experiment. The average numbers of errors
were 1.8 (ST), 2.2 (S), 2.9 (T) and 3.2 (UR) out of 20. The pattern of errors is similar
to that of the response time, indicating no tradeoff between speed and accuracy. Oneway repeated measures ANOVAs showed a main effect of prime type: F 1 (3, 39) = 5.37,
p <.005; F 2 (3, 79) = 5.59, p =.0001. Pair-wise comparisons showed significant differences
between ST and UR (p <.005 by subjects and by items) and between ST and T (p <.05
by subjects and by items).
In sum, the results from Experiment 1 showed that only a complete overlap
was sufficient to facilitate target response. Segmental or tonal overlap alone did not
facilitate target response reliably. However, it was possible that the priming effect
could not be detected by the use of the ISI. In particular, it has been suggested that
lexical activation takes place rapidly in the initial phase of word recognition and
fades away rapidly (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, 1987). At 250 ms ISI, potential activation
might have disappeared before it could make an impact on the target. To explore
this possibility, a shorter ISI (50 ms) was used in Experiment 2 to examine the time
course of form priming.
3 Experiment 2
The purpose of Experiment 2 was to examine whether any evidence of lexical activation by minimal tone pairs could be detected with a shorter ISI between the prime and
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Response Time (ms)
C.-Y. Lee
1150
Figure 1
1100
Top panel:
109
Mean lexical decision response times
(in milliseconds) with standard error
bars to targets preceded by primes
sharing segmental structure and tone
(ST), segmental structure only (S),
tone only (T), and neither segmental
structure nor tone (unrelated baseline,
UR) in Experiment 1 (250 ms ISI)
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
Response Time (ms)
ST
S
T
UR
1150
Bottom panel:
1100
Mean lexical decision response times
in Experiment 2 (50 ms ISI)
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
ST
S
T
UR
target. The experimental setup was identical to that of Experiment 1, except that the
ISI was 50 ms. If there was priming other than repetition priming at this shorter ISI,
it would suggest that partial overlap could activate the target but that the activation
is short-lived.
3.1
Method
3.1.1
Participants
Forty graduate students at Brown University (age: 22 – 30 years; gender: 23 male,
17 female) participated in the experiment. None of them had participated in
Experiment 1.
3.1.2
Materials
The materials were identical to those used in Experiment 1 except that the ISI used
for this experiment was 50 ms.
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Lexical tone in form priming
3.1.3
Procedure
The procedure was identical to that of Experiment 1 except that no additional
recording was made.
3.2
Results and Discussion
As in Experiment 1, response time and accuracy were recorded and used for separate
ANOVAs. One item (ci3 ‘this’) was excluded from the analyses because all 10 participants receiving List 4 responded incorrectly to this item.
The bottom panel of Figure 1 shows the average response times to targets
preceded by the four types of primes. One-way repeated measure ANOVAs revealed
a main effect of prime type: F 1 (3, 39) = 15.88, p <.0001; F 2 (3, 78) = 20.29, p <.0001.
Pair-wise means comparisons showed significant facilitation (108 ms) by the ST
primes compared to the unrelated baseline (p =.0001 by subjects and by items). As
noted earlier, this repetition priming was expected. For S primes, which shared only
segmental structure with the targets, no significant facilitation was found. With the
50ms ISI, primes with a mismatch in tone still failed to facilitate target response. For T
primes, which shared only tone with targets, no reliable priming was found either.
In addition to the priming effect, multiple comparisons also revealed reliable
differences among the ST, S, and T conditions. In particular, ST was 82ms faster than
S (p <.0001 by subjects and by items) and 133 ms faster than T (p <.0001 by subjects
and by items) S was 51ms faster than T (p <.05 by subjects, p <.005 by items). As noted,
this indicates that the listeners were sensitive to the phonological difference among
the three types of primes at 50 ms ISI.
Participants in this experiment also made few errors and there was no indication
of any speed-accuracy tradeoff. The average numbers of errors were 1.4 (ST), 1.7 (S),
2.9 (T), and 2.2 (UR) out of 20. One-way repeated measures ANOVAs revealed a
main effect of prime type: F 1 (3, 39) = 6.15, p <.001; F 2 (3, 78) = 8.29, p <.0001. Pair-wise
comparisons showed significant differences between ST and UR (p <.05 by subjects,
p <.005 by items), ST and T (p <.0001 by subjects and by items), and S and T (p <.005
by subjects, p <.001 by items).
In sum, the pattern of results from this experiment is identical to that obtained
from Experiment 1. The only reliable effect was repetition priming. There was no
evidence that tonal or segmental overlap alone could facilitate target response despite
the fact that listeners were sensitive to the phonological difference between the ST, S,
and T primes. However, the finding that minimal tone pair primes, despite a complete
segmental overlap, still failed to activate the target is consistent with findings of
Cutler and Otake (1999), Cutler, and Donselaar (2001), and Cooper et al. (2002), who
interpreted the lack of priming as listeners’ use of accentual or stress information to
inhibit activation of the incompatible member of the accentual or stress pair. Following
the same logic, the absence of priming could be interpreted as listeners’ use of tonal
information to inhibit activation of the incompatible member of the tone pair.
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Nonetheless, the question remains whether tonal or segmental overlap was truly
unable to facilitate target response, or the priming effect could not be detected by
the direct priming paradigm. As noted in the introduction, behavioral measures that
involve explicit response may invoke participants’ response strategies (Schirmer et
al., 2005). Direct priming could be particularly susceptible to such strategies also
because the prime-target relationships may be transparent to the participants. Mediated
priming, while still requiring participants’ behavioral response, may be less susceptible
to response strategies arising from the detection of the prime-target relationships.
Experiment 3 and 4 further explored form priming with the mediated priming task.
4 Experiment 3
In Experiments 3 and 4, the mediated priming paradigm (Zwitserlood, 1996) was used
to further evaluate the results from Experiments 1 and 2. In this paradigm, the prime
(e.g., streak) and target (e.g., road) are not directly related, but the prime is form-related
to a third word (e.g., street) that is not actually presented, but is semantically related
to the target. If there is facilitation of the target road by the prime streak, the effect
is most likely mediated by the third word street (not actually presented) since there is
no direct relationship between the prime and target. By the same token, if ma3 ‘horse’
primes fu4qin0 ‘father’, the effect is most likely mediated by ma1 ‘mother’ based on
the phonological overlap between ma3 and ma1 and the semantic association between
ma1 ‘mother’ and fu4qin0 ‘father’, even though the mediating word ma1 ‘mother’ is
not actually presented. Since the prime and target were not directly related in form,
mediated priming may be less susceptible to participants’ response strategies. As in
Experiments 1 and 2, the 250 ms ISI was used in Experiment 3 and the 50 ms ISI in
Experiment 4 to evaluate the time course of tone processing in priming.
4.1
Method
4.1.1
Participants
Forty graduate students at Ohio University (age: 22 – 30 years; gender: 19 male, 21
female) participated in the experiment. None of them had participated in the previous
experiments.
4.1.2
Materials
The same set of primes used in Experiments 1 and 2 served as primes for the current
experiment. In addition, 80 disyllabic Mandarin words, which were semantically
related to the ST primes, were selected as targets. Therefore, for each target, there
were four types of primes: ST primes were semantically related to the target (e.g.,
lou2 ‘hall’ — jian4zhu0 ‘building’); S primes shared segmental structure with ST
primes but were not related to targets (e.g., lou3 ‘hug’ — jian4zhu0 ‘building’); T
primes shared tone with ST primes but were not related to targets (e.g., cang2
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Lexical tone in form priming
‘hide’ — jian4zhu0 ‘building’); UR primes were not related to the ST primes or the
targets (e.g., pan1 ‘climb’ — jian4zhu0 ‘building’). In addition to the word targets, 80
disyllabic, pronounceable nonwords were generated by combining the first syllable
of the word targets and the monosyllabic nonword targets used in Experiments 1
and 2. The nonwords were paired with the same set of primes and served as fillers.
The complete set of stimuli is listed in Appendix B.
As in Experiments 1 and 2, prime type was intended as a within-subject factor
and participants were not to hear the same stimulus item more than once during the
experiment. For these purposes, four stimulus lists were constructed. For a given
target, each of the four primes was assigned to a different list such that each list would
include all four prime types without repeating any stimulus items. Therefore, each
list included all 160 targets (80 words and 80 nonwords) with the four types of primes
equally distributed. Each participant was randomly selected to be tested on one list
only. The ISI between the prime and target was 250 ms for a direct comparison with
Experiment 1. The intertrial interval remained three seconds.
4.1.3
Procedure
The disyllabic word and nonword targets were recorded by the same speaker used in
Experiment 1. The procedures for recording, digitizing, sound file processing, item
randomization, and subject assignment and testing were also identical to those in
Experiment 1.
4.2
Results and Discussion
The top panel of Figure 2 shows the mean response times to targets preceded by the
four types of primes. One-way repeated measure ANOVAs revealed a main effect
of prime type: F 1 (3, 39) = 22.64, p <.0001; F 2 (3, 79) = 12.16, p <.0001. Pair-wise means
comparisons showed significant facilitation (49 ms) by the ST primes (p <.0001 by
subjects and by items). Since the ST primes were semantically related to the targets,
the facilitation based on semantic association was expected. There was no other
priming effect. The average response times in the S, T, and UR conditions were
virtually identical: No statistically significant differences were found in other pairwise mean comparisons.
Compared to Experiments 1 and 2, participants made even fewer errors in this
experiment. The average numbers of errors were 0.4 (ST), 0.7 (S), 1.0 (T) and 1.1 (UR)
out of 20. One-way repeated measures ANOVAs revealed a main effect of prime
type: F 1 (3, 39) = 5.39, p <.005; F 2 (3, 78) = 5.1, p <.005. Pair-wise comparisons showed
significant differences between ST and UR (p <.01 by subjects and by items) and
between ST and T (p <.05 by subjects and by items).
In sum, the only priming effect obtained in this experiment was semantic priming
by the ST primes. There was no evidence that the S or T primes produced facilitation mediated by the ST primes through semantic association with the targets. As
in Experiments 1 and 2, the absence of priming from S primes suggests that tonal
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C.-Y. Lee
113
Response Time (ms)
minimal pairs were not activated. That is, the S primes did not activate the mediating
word, which in turn failed to activate the target. However, it was possible that the
250ms ISI was too long for the priming effect to emerge due to the transient nature
of lexical activation. The similarity in results between Experiments 1 and 2 seem to
argue against this possibility. Nonetheless, it was an empirical question of whether
ISI would have a different effect on the mediated priming task. In particular, lexical
decision in mediated priming is not made on a target that is a direct competitor with
the prime. Evidence of lexical activation may be able to emerge at a shorter ISI when
residual activation is still effective and when the prime is not a direct competitor of
the target. To evaluate this possibility, Experiment 4 was conducted with the same
set of materials used in Experiment 3 but with a shorter ISI (50ms).
1150
Figure 2
1100
Top panel:
Mean lexical decision response
times (in milliseconds) with standard error bars to targets preceded
by primes overlapping with ST
primes in segmental structure
and tone (ST), segmental structure only (S), tone only (T),
and neither segmental structure
nor tone (UR) in Experiment 3
(250 ms ISI)
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
Response Time (ms)
ST
S
T
UR
1150
Bottom panel:
1100
Mean lexical decision response
times in Experiment 4 (50 ms ISI)
1050
1000
950
900
850
800
5 Experiment 4
The purpose of Experiment 4 was to examine whether any mediated priming from the S
or T primes could be detected with a shorter ISI. The experimental setup was identical
to that of Experiment 3 except the ISI was 50 ms in the current experiment.
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Lexical tone in form priming
5.1
Method
5.1.1
Participants
Forty graduate students at Brown University (age: 22 – 30 years; gender: 22 male, 18
female) participated in the experiment. Twenty-six of the participants also participated
in Experiment 2, which took place two months before Experiment 4.
5.1.2
Materials
The materials were identical to those used in Experiment 3 except that the ISI used
for this experiment was 50 ms.
5.1.3
Procedure
The procedure was identical to that of Experiment 3 except that no additional
recording was made.
5.2
Results and Discussion
The bottom panel of Figure 2 shows the mean response times to targets preceded
by the four types of primes. One-way repeated measure ANOVAs revealed a main
effect of prime type: F 1 (3, 39) = 18.69, p <.0001; F 2 (3, 79) = 13.65, p <.0001. Pair-wise
means comparisons showed significant facilitation (51 ms) by ST primes (p <.0001 by
subjects and by items). Since the ST primes were semantically related to the targets, the
facilitation based on semantic association was expected. In addition to the semantic
priming, there was also significant facilitation (18 ms) by S primes (p <.05 by subjects
and p =.05 by items), which was not found in previous experiments.
In addition to the priming effects, multiple comparisons showed a number of
reliable differences among the ST, S, and T conditions. In particular, ST was 34 ms
faster than S (p <.0001 by subjects and by items) and 53 ms faster than T (p <.0001 by
subjects and by items) S was 19 ms faster than T (p <.05 by subjects, nonsignificant by
items). Again, these results suggest that the listeners were sensitive to the phonological
difference among the three types of primes at this ISI.
Participants made few errors in this experiment. The average numbers of errors
were 0.6 (ST), 1.0 (S), 1.0 (T) and 1.1 (UR) out of 20. One-way repeated measures
ANOVAs revealed a main effect of prime type, significant only by subjects,
F 1 (3, 39) = 2.7, p <.05. Pair-wise comparisons showed significant difference between
ST and UR (p =.01) and between ST and T (p <.05).
In sum, semantic priming remained evident at 50 ms ISI, as was found in
Experiment 3. However, contrary to the previous three experiments where no other
priming effects were found, reliable facilitation by S primes was found in this experiment with the shorter ISI. The S primes were minimal tone pairs of ST primes, which
were semantically related to the target. Since the S primes and targets were not
Language and Speech
C.-Y. Lee
115
directly related in form or meaning, the priming effect was most likely mediated by
the ST primes, which differed from the S primes only in tone. This suggests that the
S primes did activate the ST primes, which in turn activated the targets to produce
the facilitation.
6 General Discussion
This study aimed to explore the role of lexical tone in spoken word recognition by
investigating the effects of segmental and tonal overlap in form priming. Facilitation
in direct priming was found when the prime and target were identical in both tonal
and segmental structure. Similarly, facilitation in mediated priming was found when
the prime and the mediating word were identical. Furthermore, mediated facilitation
was also found when the prime and the mediating word were different in tone only
and when the ISI was short (50 ms). Overall, these results showed that a complete
overlap in tonal and segmental structure generated facilitation consistently, but
tonal or segmental overlap alone was not sufficient to generate reliable facilitation
with one exception: the minimal tone pair prime (segmental overlap) did produce
mediated priming at 50 ms ISI. If facilitation reflects target activation, these results
indicate that primes sharing only segmental structure (i.e., tonal mismatch) or tone
(i.e., segmental mismatch) with the target were not able to activate the target except
when the ISI was short. As Zwitserlood (1996) suggested, mediated priming has a
lexical locus because the activation of the mediating word is probed by a semantically related target. In other words, the facilitation found in Experiment 4 indicates
that lou3 ‘hug’ did activate lou2 ‘hall’, which in turn activated its semantic associate
jian4zhu0 ‘building’. However, the facilitation was reliable only at 50 ms ISI, which
indicates the activation was short-lived.
How would these results compare to previous form priming studies examining
the processing of words contrasting in lexical prosody? As noted, similar studies using
the form priming paradigm have consistently found that primes with a mismatch in
lexical prosody did not produce priming, which has been interpreted by the authors as
the use of lexical prosody to constrain lexical activation, that is, to reduce the number
of activated candidates (Cooper et al., 2002; Cutler & Donselaar, 2001; Cutler & Otake,
1999; Soto-Faraco, Sebastian-Galles, & Cutler, 2001). In other words, these minimal
prosodic pairs are not treated as homophones in lexical processing (cf. Cutler, 1986).
Under this view, the “failure” of minimal tone pairs (i.e., S primes) to facilitate target
response in Experiments 1, 2, and 3 can be interpreted as listeners’ active use of tonal
information to constrain lexical activation. That is, tonal information allowed listeners
to rule out tonally incompatible candidates in the early phase of lexical activation.
If listeners failed to use tonal information to constrain lexical activation, according
to this reasoning, minimal tone pairs would be treated as homophones and would
produce facilitatory priming.
Facilitatory priming, however, was indeed observed in minimal tone pair condition (i.e., S primes) when the ISI was short, which suggests that a mismatch in tone
did not prevent activation at this ISI (Experiment 4). The use of the two ISIs allowed
the current experiments to evaluate not only the effects of segmental and tonal
overlap, but also the time course of minimal tone pair activation. Taken together,
Language and Speech
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Lexical tone in form priming
results from the experiments indicate that minimal tone pairs were activated in the
early phase of lexical access based on form overlap, but listeners were able to use
tonal information to quickly rule out the tonally incompatible candidates. Another
evidence for the listeners’ successful use of tonal information is that the response
time to minimal tone pair (S) primes was significantly slower compared to identity
(ST) primes in all four experiments. This result indicates that the minimal tone pair
primes (S) were not treated as homophones to the segmentally identical ST primes
or targets (cf. Cutler, 1986).
If minimal tone pairs were indeed activated early, why did we not observe
statistically reliable evidence of such activation in Experiment 2, where the ISI was
also 50 ms? Factors specific to the direct priming task may have played a role. In
particular, lexical decision was made only after a target word was recognized. For
a word decision to be made, all other activated competitors need to be ruled out.
Under current models of spoken word recognition such as TRACE (McClelland &
Elman, 1986), Cohort (Marslen-Wilson, 1987), and the Neighborhood Activation
model (Luce & Pisoni, 1998), a minimal tone pair prime should be a strong competitor
with the target based on their form similarity. When a lexical decision was made
on a target preceded by a prime that was a minimal tone pair (Experiment 2), the
decision was likely to be slowed down due to direct competition with the prime. In
fact, the literature on segmental processing has shown inhibitory priming by word
primes sharing more than one or two segmental phonemes with word targets, and
the inhibitory priming is normally taken as evidence for lexical competition between
phonologically similar words (Goldinger, 1999; Hamburger & Slowiaczek, 1996;
Monsell & Hirsh, 1998; Radeau, Morais, & Dewier, 1989; Slowiaczek & Hamburger,
1992). The minimal tone pair prime in Experiment 2 could have activated the target,
but the activation was inhibited by direct competition with the target, on which the
lexical decision was made. In mediated priming, lexical decision was not made on a
target directly competing with the minimal tone prime and the form-based facilitation
was able to be detected. This possibility, however, needs to be evaluated by further
research designed to examine the role of tone in lexical competition.
The use of a different tone language also allowed a comparison with previous
tone priming studies. Experiment 1 in the current study was in many ways analogous
to Yip (2001). Both Cantonese and Mandarin have a syllable-based tone system. Both
experiments examined direct priming in monosyllabic words. Both used the ISI of
250 ms. However, in contrast to Yip (2001), no evidence of minimal tone priming was
found in the present study. A number of factors could be the source of the contrasting
results. Cantonese has more tones (6) than Mandarin (4). The proportion of related
trials was lower (50%) in Yip (2001) compared to the current study (75%). Yip (2001)
used the shadowing task while the current study used the lexical decision task. With
regard to the number of tones, tonal contrasts may be harder to perceive in Cantonese
because five of the six tones in Cantonese have a similar onset on the F 0 scale and
have similar F 0 contours, whereas the four tones in Mandarin have fairly distinct
F 0 contours (with the exception between the rising and the low tone). Cutler and
Chen (1997) found a difference in response accuracy between perceptually easy and
hard tonal contrasts in Cantonese. It is not clear if the word pairs used in Yip (2001)
involved perceptually hard tone contrasts. If they did, the listeners might not be able
Language and Speech
C.-Y. Lee
117
to distinguish minimal tone pairs as effectively as the Mandarin counterparts, which
could result in minimal tone pair priming.
The difference in the proportion of related trials was unlikely to be the source of
contrast between Yip (2001) and the current study. In particular, Yip (2001) intended to
replicate Yip et al. (1998) with a lower proportion of related trials in order to evaluate
the extent to which response strategies contribute to facilitatory priming (Goldinger,
Luce, Pisoni, & Marcario, 1992). If the facilitatory priming in Yip et al. (1998) were
due to response strategies developed from detecting the prime-target relationships,
a lower proportion should have also reduced or removed the facilitation. On the
contrary, Yip (2001) showed that not only the facilitation by the minimal tone pair
(onset+rhyme primes) remained, there was also reliable facilitation by the rhyme +tone
prime. Moreover, the proportion of related trials in the current study was even higher
than that in Yip (2001). If facilitation were due to the strategies, facilitatory priming
would have been evident in the present study as well.
That having been said, response strategies due to general task demands could be
an issue for studies using behavioral measures (Schirmer et al., 2005). In particular,
all behavioral measures involve explicit responses by listeners, which may invoke
postaccess processes that reflect task demands in addition to the activation-competition processes. In the segmental literature on form priming, facilitation has been
consistently observed in studies using the shadowing task, in which listeners are
asked to repeat the target word (Goldinger, 1999; Hamburger & Slowiaczek, 1996;
Slowiaczek & Hamburger, 1992). However, it has been pointed out that the facilitation
may reflect a task-specific strategy (Goldinger, 1999; Hamburger & Slowiaczek, 1999;
Norris, McQueen, & Cutler, 2002). That is, listeners seem to learn that prime and
target often start with the same segments and are more ready to repeat the target word.
Schirmer et al. (2005) showed comparable results for segmental and tonal violations
in the ERP and reaction time measures but not in the behavioral accuracy measure.
One way to avoid such task-induced response strategies is to use temporally sensitive
electrophysiological measures such as ERP (Schirmer et al., 2005).
At least three issues remain to be examined regarding the role of lexical tone in
form priming. First, what is the relative contribution of tone and segmental structure
in form priming? The prime and target in the current study were either maximally
similar (S prime) or maximally distinct (T prime) in segmental structure. It is not
known whether the priming effect would vary as a function of the degree of overlap
(e.g., overlap in consonant+tone or vowel+tone). Cutler and Chen (1995) compared the
effects of tone versus rhyme overlap in disyllabic words, but further studies following
Cutler and Chen’s (1997) systematic manipulation of tone and segmental mismatch
are needed to evaluate the individual and joint contribution of segmental structure
and tone in form priming.
The second issue concerns the role of tonal similarity in form priming. Cutler and
Chen (1997) and Ye and Connine (1999) showed that performance in same-different
judgment, lexical decision, and tone-phoneme monitoring all varied as a function
of the perceptual similarity between tones. This finding was taken as evidence for
the graded nature of lexical activation based on similarity between the input and
lexical representation (Ye & Connine, 1999). If the mapping from the acoustic signal
Language and Speech
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Lexical tone in form priming
is graded, lexical activation should also vary as a function of tonal similarity. In
particular, tone perception studies have consistently shown that the rising tone and
the low tone in Mandarin are more confusing than other tonal contrasts (Gandour,
1983; Kiriloff, 1969) presumably because of their acoustic similarity (i.e., the two tones
share a similar onset on the F 0 scale and have similar F 0 contours). It is of interest to
see if tonal similarity plays a role in form priming as well.
Finally, although tone in isolated syllables appears to be processed more slowly
and less accurately compared to consonant and vowel (Cutler & Chen, 1997; Ye &
Connine, 1999), Ye and Connine (1999) also found that the disadvantage of tone
disappeared when the tone-phoneme target to be monitored was embedded in an
idiom in Mandarin. It seems that the disadvantage of tone in perceptual processing
was neutralized by the presence of a semantic context. Furthermore, Schirmer et al.
(2005) found that semantic incongruity with a sentential context generated comparable N400-like negativity between segmental and tonal modifications, suggesting
that sentence context may be used to constrain lexical activation. Taken together,
the later arrival of tonal information in isolated syllables may not hinder the relative
usefulness of tone in a more realistic processing environment after all.
The conclusion to be drawn from the current study is that auditory presentation of a Mandarin word activates its minimal tone pairs in the early phase of
lexical activation, but tonal information is used soon afterwards to resolve segmental
ambiguity, ruling out candidates that are mismatching in tone. Evidence from the
present experiments suggests that ‘horse’ did activate ‘mother’, but Mandarin listeners
quickly figured out that ‘horse’ was not ‘mother’ after all. Listeners are able to do so
by utilizing tonal information on-line to disambiguate the minimal tone pairs.
manuscript received:
02. 16. 2005
manuscript accepted: 03. 14. 2006
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Appendices
A. Stimuli used in Experiments 1 and 2, transcribed in Chinese characters and the Pinyin
Romanization system.
Targets
Word
wai
ceng
lun
chuang
heng
shui
lou
leng
mie
zhe
zuo
niu
qia
cao
zeng
yong
ai
zang
chan
rao
peng
wen
cai
mou
hai
rang
che
lu
mai
shai
san
min
zhou
chou
ran
tun
4
4
4
3
1
3
2
3
4
2
3
3
4
3
1
4
3
1
1
2
4
4
1
3
3
3
1
2
2
4
1
2
2
4
3
1
Nonword
外
ken 4
蹭
lia 4
论
fo 4
闯
sai 3
哼 mang 1
水
nen 3
楼
wai 2
冷
mie 3
灭 qiong 4
折
cuo 2
左
run 3
扭
miu 3
恰
neng 4
草
ruo 3
增
nu 1
用
zei 4
矮
lue 3
髒
jiong 1
搀
rong 1
饶 shuan 2
碰
gei 4
问
de 4
猜
nuan 1
某
nue 3
海
en 3
嚷 zhuang 3
車
min 1
炉
yue 2
埋
nie 2
晒
qun 4
三
fou 1
民
zang 2
轴
suan 2
臭
dei 4
染
te 3
吞
mou 1
Primes
ST
wai
ceng
lun
chuang
heng
shui
lou
leng
mie
zhe
zuo
niu
qia
cao
zeng
yong
ai
zang
chan
rao
peng
wen
cai
mou
hai
rang
che
lu
mai
shai
san
min
zhou
chou
ran
tun
S
4
4
4
3
1
3
2
3
4
2
3
3
4
3
1
4
3
1
1
2
4
4
1
3
3
3
1
2
2
4
1
2
2
4
3
1
外
蹭
论
闯
哼
水
楼
冷
灭
折
左
扭
恰
草
增
用
矮
髒
搀
饶
碰
问
猜
某
海
嚷
車
炉
埋
晒
三
民
轴
臭
染
吞
wai
ceng
lun
chuang
heng
shui
lou
leng
mie
zhe
zuo
niu
qia
cao
zeng
yong
ai
zang
chan
rao
peng
wen
cai
mou
hai
rang
che
lu
mai
shai
san
min
zhou
chou
ran
Tun
1
1
1
2
4
2
3
2
1
3
2
2
1
2
4
1
2
4
4
3
1
1
4
2
2
2
4
3
3
1
4
3
3
1
2
4
T
UR
歪
leng 4 愣
噌
rao 4 绕
抡
nei 4 内
床
zen 3 怎
横
tai 1 胎
谁
an 3 俺
搂
cang 2 藏
棱
qia 3 卡
咩 chuang 4 创
者
nin 2 您
昨
gai 3 改
牛
qing 3 请
掐
nong 4 弄
槽
ying 3 影
赠
suan 1 酸
拥
te 4 特
癌
duan 3 短
葬
kou 1 抠
颤
gu 1 孤
扰
xiang 2 降
砰
kuo 4 阔
温
mei 4 妹
菜
shuo 1 说
谋
ruan 3 软
还
dong 3 懂
瓤
bei 3 北
撤
zuan 1 钻
橹
pin 2 贫
买
ye 2 爷
筛
zong 4 纵
散
que 1 缺
抿
po 2 婆
肘
beng 2 甭
抽
geng 4 更
燃
ku 3 苦
褪
dao 1 刀
jiong
tiao
pie
liu
wa
cheng
pan
sao
kuang
nai
nen
hen
nu:
sun
tian
lia
yun
hu
hou
lang
tan
zha
ren
bai
kun
cou
qian
sa
suo
hong
re
kua
ben
man
tou
sha
3
3
3
1
2
4
1
1
2
4
4
4
3
1
3
3
1
3
3
4
3
3
3
1
4
4
3
4
1
3
3
1
1
3
1
3
窘
挑
撇
溜
娃
秤
攀
搔
狂
耐
嫩
恨
女
孙
舔
俩
晕
虎
吼
浪
毯
砟
忍
掰
困
凑
浅
卅
缩
哄
惹
夸
奔
满
偷
傻
Language and Speech
122
pin
zan
meng
nie
shuai
pao
reng
za
guo
fa
tie
kang
nu
chun
tui
luan
er
yuan
ao
tao
can
bi
bie
kuan
niang
nao
mo
ru
cun
pen
quan
huan
mao
piao
lei
sui
xue
kan
song
ci
guang
han
niao
Lexical tone in form priming
1
2
4
1
3
3
1
1
1
3
1
2
4
1
1
3
3
3
2
1
3
1
1
3
2
4
1
4
4
1
4
3
1
4
2
1
4
3
4
3
3
3
3
拼
咱
梦
捏
甩
跑
扔
咂
锅
法
贴
扛
怒
春
推
卵
耳
远
熬
掏
惨
逼
鳖
款
娘
闹
摸
入
寸
喷
劝
缓
猫
票
雷
虽
血
砍
送
此
广
喊
鸟
guai 3 拐
ran
le
nin
ruan
se
die
kao
nuo
niao
xiong
rui
ka
diu
kuai
gun
teng
niang
zhei
zun
rou
huai
shun
nei
chai
zhun
kei
lie
ping
cang
nai
ca
kuo
re
keng
pou
lai
sou
chui
zhuo
ce
ze
cen
nong
1
2
4
1
3
3
1
1
1
3
1
2
4
1
1
3
3
3
2
1
3
1
1
3
2
4
1
4
4
1
4
3
1
4
2
1
4
3
4
3
3
3
3
tuan 3
Language and Speech
pin
zan
meng
nie
shuai
pao
reng
za
guo
fa
tie
kang
nu
chun
tui
luan
er
yuan
ao
tao
can
bi
bie
kuan
niang
nao
mo
ru
cun
pen
quan
huan
mao
piao
lei
sui
xue
kan
song
ci
guang
han
niao
1
2
4
1
3
3
1
1
1
3
1
2
4
1
1
3
3
3
2
1
3
1
1
3
2
4
1
4
4
1
4
3
1
4
2
1
4
3
4
3
3
3
3
拼
咱
梦
捏
甩
跑
扔
咂
锅
法
贴
扛
怒
春
推
卵
耳
远
熬
掏
惨
逼
鳖
款
娘
闹
摸
入
寸
喷
劝
缓
猫
票
雷
虽
血
砍
送
此
广
喊
鸟
guai 3 拐
4
3
1
4
4
1
2
3
2
4
3
1
3
3
3
4
4
1
1
3
1
2
3
1
4
2
3
3
2
2
3
1
3
2
1
2
3
4
3
1
4
1
4
聘
攒
蒙
镍
率
抛
仍
咋
国
发
铁
糠
努
蠢
腿
乱
二
冤
凹
讨
餐
鼻
瘪
宽
酿
挠
抹
乳
存
盆
犬
欢
卯
瓢
勒
随
雪
看
耸
呲
逛
酣
尿
guai 1
乖
pin
Zan
Meng
nie
shuai
pao
reng
za
guo
fa
tie
kang
nu
chun
tui
luan
er
yuan
ao
tao
can
bi
bie
kuan
niang
nao
mo
ru
cun
pen
quan
huan
mao
piao
lei
sui
xue
kan
song
ci
guang
han
niao
1
2
4
1
3
3
1
1
1
3
1
2
4
1
1
3
3
3
2
1
3
1
1
3
2
4
1
4
4
1
4
3
1
4
2
1
4
3
4
3
3
3
3
靴
蒙
坏
招
跛
匪
抓
熏
拉
嘴
村
俗
倔
通
桑
体
哪
宿
贼
闷
狗
捞
拴
处
凿
配
摔
袜
告
搭
落
扯
切
愧
挪
擦
让
得
难
转
否
举
妥
she 3
舍
xue
meng
huai
zhao
bo
fei
zhua
xun
la
zui
cun
su
jue
tong
sang
ti
na
xiu
zei
men
gou
lao
shuan
chu
zao
pei
shuai
wa
gao
da
luo
che
qie
kui
nuo
ca
rang
dei
nan
zhuan
fou
ju
tuo
3
1
3
3
1
4
3
2
3
1
2
1
2
2
2
1
4
1
4
3
1
3
2
4
1
3
3
3
2
3
3
1
3
2
4
3
2
4
3
4
4
1
1
卡
揣
窄
宠
葱
俊
我
坟
选
丢
拔
吹
忙
聊
薄
眯
胖
撩
棍
逞
揪
暖
勺
乐
收
损
晃
剐
佛
耍
吮
粗
寝
驴
晃
免
绳
退
喘
润
日
追
僧
rou 4
肉
ka
chuai
zhai
chong
cong
jun
wo
fen
xuan
diu
ba
chui
mang
liao
bao
mi
pang
liao
gun
cheng
jiu
nuan
shao
le
shou
sun
huang
gua
fo
shua
shun
cu
qin
lu:
huang
mian
sheng
tui
chuan
run
ri
zhui
seng
C.-Y. Lee
123
B. Stimuli used in Experiments 3 and 4. Only targets are shown. The primes were identical to
those used in Experiments 1 and 2.
Word
li3mian4
zou3lu4
shuo1hua4
ji2mang2
chang4ge1
ye4ti3
jian4zhu2
wen1nuan3
xiao1shi1
wan1qu1
you4bian1
tiao4wu3
zheng4hao3
lu4se4
jian3shao3
hua1fei4
shen1gao1
gan1jing4
tian1jia1
yuan2liang4
yu4jian4
hui2da2
mi2yu3
ren2wu4
he2liu2
han3jiao4
gong1lu4
chu2fang2
yin3cang2
tai4yang2
shu4zi4
ren2kou3
he2xin1
xiang1wei4
yan2se4
shi2wu4
zu3he2
ta1men2
shui4jiao4
ji3ya1
shou3bi4
Nonword
裡面
走路
說話
急忙
唱歌
液體
建筑
溫暖
消失
弯曲
右边
跳舞
正好
绿色
減少
花费
身高
干净
添加
原谅
遇见
回答
谜语
人物
河流
喊叫
公路
厨房
隐藏
太阳
数字
人口
核心
香味
颜色
食物
组合
他们
睡觉
挤压
手臂
li3ken4
zou3lia4
shuo1fo4
ji1sai3
chang4mang1
ye4nen3
jian4wai2
wen1mie3
xiao1qiong4
wan1cuo2
you4run3
tiao4miu3
zheng4neng4
lu4ruo3
jian3nu1
hua1zei4
shen1lue3
gan1jiong1
tian1rong1
yuan2shuan2
yu4gei4
hui2de4
mi2nuan1
ren2nue3
he2en3
han3zhuang3
gong1min1
chu2yue2
yin3nie2
tai4qun4
shu4fou1
ren2zang2
he2suan2
xiang1dei4
yan2te3
shi2mou1
zu3ran1
ta1le2
shui4nin4
ji3ruan3
shou3se3
Word
zhui1gan3
la1ji1
zui3ba1
chao3cai4
lu4shi1
jiao1shui3
yun4song4
sheng1qi4
dong1tian1
la1che3
jing1zi3
yan3jing1
kao4jin4
nan2shou4
ba2chu1
bei1shang1
qiang2po4
wu1gui1
qian2bi4
fu4qin1
hun4luan4
jie1chu4
chu1lai2
chang2du4
zheng1qi4
shui4fu2
ji2zao4
xiao3gou3
xi4yuan4
xia4yu3
dan4shi4
hong2se4
dao1zi0
juan1zeng4
na4ge0
kuan1chang3
da4sheng1
fei1xiang2
zhuan3wan1
Nonword
追赶
垃圾
嘴巴
炒菜
律师
胶水
运送
生气
冬天
拉扯
精子
眼睛
靠近
难受
拔出
悲伤
强迫
乌龟
钱币
父亲
混乱
接触
出来
长度
蒸气
说服
急躁
小狗
戏院
下雨
但是
红色
刀子
捐赠
那个
宽敞
大声
飞翔
转弯
zhui1die3
la1kao1
zui3nuo1
chao3niao3
lu4xiong3
jiao1rui1
yun4ka2
sheng1diu4
dong1kuai1
la1gun1
jing1teng3
yan3niang3
kao4zhei3
nan2zun2
ba2rou1
bei1huai3
qiang2shun1
wu1nei1
qian2chai3
fu4zhun2
hun4kei4
jie1lie1
lai2ping4
chang2cang4
zheng1nai1
shui4ca4
ji2kuo3
xiao3re1
xi4keng4
xia4pou2
dan4lai1
hong2sou4
dao1chui3
juan1zhuo4
na4ce3
kuan1ze3
da4cen3
fei1nong3
zhuan3tuan3
Language and Speech