The Lexical Tone Partially Depends on Segments: Evidence from Visual-World Eye Tracking

This study investigated the extent to which the role of lexical tone is contingent upon phonemic segments. Employing the printed-word paradigm, this study presented native Mandarin speakers with a visual display comprising a target word (e.g., "" /chai2huo3/, "firewood"), a same-tone competitor (e.g., "" /cha2dao4/, "tea ceremony"), a different-tone competitor (e.g., "" /cha1kong3/, "socket"), and two distractors. Simultaneously, participants listened to an auditory target word. Critically, the phonological competitors shared partial segmental information with the spoken target words. Participants were then required to select the visual target word in the visual display. Results revealed substantial phonological competition effects in both the same-tone and different-tone conditions, with the former exhibiting a more pronounced effect. These results elucidate that the role of lexical tone partially depends on the availability of segmental information. Even in cases where certain segments are accessible, lexical tone can still influence the activation degree of the lexical candidate based on the tonal similarity, where the more similar candidates are activated to a higher degree than the less similar ones.