声调的社会群体约定性——来自跨方言单字调辨认实验的启示

The Convention on Tone Identification by Native Social Groups:An Enlightenment from the Experiments of Tone Perception Cross-dialects

文章对声调与音高的关系提出一个“社会群体约定”的假设。该假设是指同一地域内同一语言的使用群体对音高或声调具有相同的感知模式。文章设计了三个方言实验测试同一被试群体对不同方言音高形式的敏感性,分别是母语方言感知、相似方言感知和异方言感知实验。结果证实被试仅对母语方言中范畴化的音高具有辨别能力,这种特定的音高被称为声调。他们听辨其他方言时只能采用物理音高线索判断或者利用母语经验来比较判断。更准确地说,各类单字音节在声学上蕴含了无限多的音高形式,唯心理感知产生的或范畴化的音高形式才能获得声调地位。文章结论是:声调是同一社会群体约定的范畴化音高形式。

This paper proposes a hypothesis of“social group convention”based on the relationship between tone and pitch,which refers to the same pattern of perception of pitch or tone shared by speakers of the same language in the same region.In this paper,three dialect experiments are designed to test the sensitivity of the same subject group to the pitch forms of different dialects,namely the native dialect perception experiment,the similar dialect perception experiment and the different dialect perception experiment.The results confirm that the subjects have the ability to distinguish only categorical pitches in the native dialect,which are called tones.When they hear other dialects,they can only use physical pitch cues or compare them with native language experience.More precisely,various monosyllables contain an infinite number of pitch forms acoustically,and only the psychological perception or categorization of pitch forms can achieve tone status.The conclusion of this paper is that tone is a categorical form of pitch agreed by the same social group.