Tone slips in Cantonese: Evidence for early phonological encoding

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Psycholinguistics
• Phonetics

Background:

• Understanding phonological tone encoding is crucial for speech production models.
• Existing models offer competing explanations for tone error patterns.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate speech errors in Cantonese, specifically tone errors.
• To differentiate between tonal frames and active selection accounts of tone encoding.
• To propose a refined speech production architecture for phonological tone.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a corpus of 2462 speech errors from natural Cantonese conversations.
• Categorization and structural investigation of 668 tone errors.
• Comparison of observed error patterns with predictions from competing models.

Main Results:

• Tone errors constitute the second most frequent error type in the corpus.
• The majority of tone errors exhibit contextual patterns (e.g., perseveration, anticipation), similar to segmental errors.
• Findings contradict the tonal frames account, which predicts rare, non-contextual tone errors.

Conclusions:

• The data strongly support an active selection model for phonological tone.
• A two-stage model is proposed: concurrent phonological selection of tone with segments, followed by sequential assignment of tone to syllables.
• This model offers a more comprehensive explanation for observed speech error patterns in Cantonese.