Investigating the Lexical Representation of Mandarin Tone 3 Phonological Alternations

Phonological alternations pose challenges for models of spoken word recognition in how surface information is mapped onto stored representations in the lexicon. In the current study, an auditory-auditory priming lexical decision experiment was conducted to investigate the alternating representations of Mandarin Tone 3 in both half-third and third tone sandhi contexts. In Mandarin, a full Tone 3 (213) is reduced to an abridged tone (21) when followed by Tone 1, Tone 2, or Tone 4 (half-third tone sandhi), and Tone 3 is replaced by Tone 2 when followed by another Tone 3 (third tone sandhi). In the half-third sandhi block, disyllabic targets with a half-third (21) or full-third (213) tone FIRST syllable and a Tone 2 (35) or Tone 4 (51) second syllable were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control prime. In the third tone sandhi block, third-tone sandhi disyllabic targets with a half-third or full-third SECOND syllable were preceded by either a half-third prime, a full-third prime, or a control prime. Results showed that both half-third and full-third primes elicited significantly faster reaction times relative to the control Tone 1 condition. The size of the facilitation was not influenced by prime condition, target frequency, targets' first syllable tone or targets' second syllable tone. These data suggest that Mandarin T3 may be a more abstract tone and stored as the first syllable for both types of sandhi words.