Tonal Aspects of Language Symposium: Bridging Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Perspectives on Tone

人类口语的基本构件是我们产生和感知的用于交流的辅音和元音。然而，与这些元素分开的是一个被称为单词韵律的旋律级别。通过改变音调和强调单词的某些部分，我们可以传达单词的意思，甚至是短语的更广泛的意义。在世界上大约50%的语言中，一个音节的音高变化会改变一个单词的意思。这种语言被称为声调语言。汉语是世界上最常用的语言，与东亚、东南亚、撒哈拉以南非洲和墨西哥南部的大多数语言一样，汉语也是声调语言。然而，尽管对语言、辅音和元音的基石进行了数十年的研究，但我们对人类如何感知声调，以及声调如何融入我们在日常生活中用来交流的更大的语法系统，了解得很少。例如，音调在大脑中是如何处理的？当说话者和听话者在对话中快速产生音调时，说话者和听者会产生什么？影响声调的更深层次的语法过程是如何影响这些事情的？这个项目的目标是将关注声调语言的不同角度的专家聚集在一起。虽然语言学家们探索了声调与语法和意义相互作用的不同方式，但他们对声调在认知中的作用关注较少。另一方面，心理学家主要关注声调的神经和行为加工，但没有研究声调细节及其与语法的相互作用。此外，对声调的认知研究大多集中在少数几种东亚语言上。然而，声调系统在世界各地的语言中有很大的不同，研究应该反映这种多样性。最后，声调语言的计算工作有可能促进研究人员之间的交叉合作，但这类工作仍处于初级阶段。第五届语言声调研讨会将集中讨论如何整合不同的学术方法来研究声调，促进声调语言的多样化研究，以及用计算方法模拟声调行为。这些目标将促进跨学科的更大合作，并推动语调的科学研究向前发展。

The essential building blocks of spoken human language are the consonants and vowels that we produce and perceive to communicate. Yet, separate from these elements is a melodic level called word prosody. By changing pitch and emphasizing certain parts of a word, we can convey the word's meaning and even the broader significance of a phrase. In approximately 50% of the world's languages, changes in pitch on a single syllable can change a word's meaning. Such languages are called tone languages. The most commonly-spoken language in the world, Chinese, is a tone language, as are most of the languages of East and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern Mexico. Yet despite decades of research on the building blocks of language, consonants and vowels, we understand little of how humans perceive tone and how tone is integrated into the larger grammatical systems that we use to communicate in everyday life. For instance, Just how is tone processed in the brain? What do speakers produce and listeners tune their ears towards when producing tones rapidly in conversation? How do the deeper grammatical processes affecting tone influence such things?The goal of this project is to bring together experts from diverse perspectives who focus on tone languages. While linguists have explored the diverse ways in which tone interacts with grammar and meaning, they have paid less attention to its role in cognition. On the other hand, psychologists have focused mainly on the neural and behavioral processing of tone, but have not explored tonal detail nor its interaction with grammar. Furthermore, most of the cognitive research on tone focuses on just a handful of East Asian languages. Yet, tonal systems vary substantially across the world's languages and the research should reflect this diversity. Finally, computational work on tone languages has the potential to promote cross-collaboration among researchers, but such work is still in its infancy. The 5th Symposium on the Tonal Aspects of Languages will focus specifically on integrating different academic approaches to the study of tone, promoting the study of diverse tone languages, and modeling tonal behavior using computational methods. These goals will promote greater collaboration across disciplines and drive the scientific study of tone forward.