Electrophysiological evidence for the integral nature of tone in Mandarin spoken word recognition

Current models of spoken word recognition have been predominantly based on studies of Indo-European languages. As a result, less is known about the recognition processes involved in the perception of tonal languages (e.g., Mandarin Chinese), and the role of lexical tone in speech perception. One view is that words in tonal languages are processed phonologically through individual segments, while another view is that they are processed lexically …