Bing'er Jiang | McGill University (original) (raw)
Papers by Bing'er Jiang
Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 2020
This study investigates how multiple cues contribute to multi-dimensional phonological contrasts ... more This study investigates how multiple cues contribute to multi-dimensional phonological contrasts at both the group level and the individual level, and how dialectal experience shapes listeners' perceptual strategies. We examine a tonal register contrast in two Chinese Wu dialects signaled by three cues: pitch height, voice quality, and pitch contour. We found that 1) at the group level, cue weights are context-specific, i.e., vary by tone, and some contrasts rely more heavily on multiple cues than others; 2) dialectal experience affects listeners' perceptual strategy: Shanghai listeners, with their own dialect having a smaller voice quality distinction, do not rely more on the cue even when listening to stimuli with a clear breathy-modal distinction, comparing to Jiashan listeners; 3) individuals' cue weights are correlated in a positive manner, meaning that some listeners show overall larger cue weights than others; larger variability is found when the contrast has more than one salient cue, in which case individuals have different options of choosing one cue over another as the primary cue and this can work against the positive correlation.
This paper explores the minimal knowledge a listener needs to compensate for phonological assimil... more This paper explores the minimal knowledge a listener needs to compensate for phonological assimilation, one kind of phonological process responsible for variation in speech. We used standard automatic speech recognition models to represent English and French listeners. We found that, first, some types of models show language-specific assimilation patterns comparable to those shown by human listeners. Like English listeners, when trained on English, the models compensate more for place assimilation than for voicing assimilation, and like French listeners, the models show the opposite pattern when trained on French. Second, the models which best predict the human pattern use contextually-sensitive acoustic models and language models, which capture allophony and phonotactics, but do not make use of higher-level knowledge of a lexicon or word boundaries. Finally, some models overcompensate for assimilation, showing a (super-human) ability to recover the underlying form even in the absen...
This paper proposes that in Mandarin double object construction (DOC), gei is an overt realizat... more This paper proposes that in Mandarin double object construction (DOC), gei is an overt realization of Harley's (2002) possessive P HAVE head: [ vP Agent [ v’ cause/o [ PP Goal [ P’ P HAVE ( gei ) [ DP Theme]]]]] It raises to join the predicate to form the verb, no matter whether the predicate is null or not. This proposal gives a unified account of why gei sometimes acts as a verb and sometimes as a preposition. It also accounts for subtle semantic differences between the DOC and the dative construction when they have the same Goal and Theme arguments.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2016
Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associ... more Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associated with the lower tonal register. This study discusses the phonetic realization of the tonal register of Wu dialects by measuring relative prominence of the first harmonic to some higher-frequency components in the spectrum, F0 and periodicity (CPP) of Jiashan Wu monosyllabic words. We find that in Jiashan Wu, the phonetic targets for tonal register contrasts are a steeper spectral-slope and a lower F0, which is consistent cross all consonant manners, while the articulatory realization varies among different types of consonants.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2016
Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associ... more Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associated with the lower tonal register. This study discusses the phonetic realization of the tonal register of Wu dialects by measuring relative prominence of the first harmonic to some higher-frequency components in the spectrum, F0 and periodicity (CPP) of Jiashan Wu monosyllabic words. We find that in Jiashan Wu, the phonetic targets for tonal register contrasts are a steeper spectral-slope and a lower F0, which is consistent cross all consonant manners, while the articulatory realization varies among different types of consonants.
Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 2020
This study investigates how multiple cues contribute to multi-dimensional phonological contrasts ... more This study investigates how multiple cues contribute to multi-dimensional phonological contrasts at both the group level and the individual level, and how dialectal experience shapes listeners' perceptual strategies. We examine a tonal register contrast in two Chinese Wu dialects signaled by three cues: pitch height, voice quality, and pitch contour. We found that 1) at the group level, cue weights are context-specific, i.e., vary by tone, and some contrasts rely more heavily on multiple cues than others; 2) dialectal experience affects listeners' perceptual strategy: Shanghai listeners, with their own dialect having a smaller voice quality distinction, do not rely more on the cue even when listening to stimuli with a clear breathy-modal distinction, comparing to Jiashan listeners; 3) individuals' cue weights are correlated in a positive manner, meaning that some listeners show overall larger cue weights than others; larger variability is found when the contrast has more than one salient cue, in which case individuals have different options of choosing one cue over another as the primary cue and this can work against the positive correlation.
This paper explores the minimal knowledge a listener needs to compensate for phonological assimil... more This paper explores the minimal knowledge a listener needs to compensate for phonological assimilation, one kind of phonological process responsible for variation in speech. We used standard automatic speech recognition models to represent English and French listeners. We found that, first, some types of models show language-specific assimilation patterns comparable to those shown by human listeners. Like English listeners, when trained on English, the models compensate more for place assimilation than for voicing assimilation, and like French listeners, the models show the opposite pattern when trained on French. Second, the models which best predict the human pattern use contextually-sensitive acoustic models and language models, which capture allophony and phonotactics, but do not make use of higher-level knowledge of a lexicon or word boundaries. Finally, some models overcompensate for assimilation, showing a (super-human) ability to recover the underlying form even in the absen...
This paper proposes that in Mandarin double object construction (DOC), gei is an overt realizat... more This paper proposes that in Mandarin double object construction (DOC), gei is an overt realization of Harley's (2002) possessive P HAVE head: [ vP Agent [ v’ cause/o [ PP Goal [ P’ P HAVE ( gei ) [ DP Theme]]]]] It raises to join the predicate to form the verb, no matter whether the predicate is null or not. This proposal gives a unified account of why gei sometimes acts as a verb and sometimes as a preposition. It also accounts for subtle semantic differences between the DOC and the dative construction when they have the same Goal and Theme arguments.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2016
Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associ... more Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associated with the lower tonal register. This study discusses the phonetic realization of the tonal register of Wu dialects by measuring relative prominence of the first harmonic to some higher-frequency components in the spectrum, F0 and periodicity (CPP) of Jiashan Wu monosyllabic words. We find that in Jiashan Wu, the phonetic targets for tonal register contrasts are a steeper spectral-slope and a lower F0, which is consistent cross all consonant manners, while the articulatory realization varies among different types of consonants.
Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America, 2016
Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associ... more Breathy phonation is known as the primary cue of the “voiced” stops in Wu dialects, and is associated with the lower tonal register. This study discusses the phonetic realization of the tonal register of Wu dialects by measuring relative prominence of the first harmonic to some higher-frequency components in the spectrum, F0 and periodicity (CPP) of Jiashan Wu monosyllabic words. We find that in Jiashan Wu, the phonetic targets for tonal register contrasts are a steeper spectral-slope and a lower F0, which is consistent cross all consonant manners, while the articulatory realization varies among different types of consonants.