Lab-related research project

This project investigates how co-intrinsic pitch, also known as consonant-related fundamental frequency perturbation (CF0), is produced and perceived across various languages and its role in the development of tone. Tonogenesis theory (e.g. Haudricourt, 1954) proposes that many tone systems arose due from voicing contrasts in consonants and the covarying pitch perturbations — the fundamental frequency (f0) of a vowel, for instance, is typically higher following a voiceless compared to a voiced obstruent. While the CF0 phenomenon received considerable attention, how people perceive them remains much less understood. Using a series of psychoacoustic and speech experiments with participants from diverse language backgrounds, this project aims to (1) quantify perceptual sensitivity to short-duration, dynamic onset f0 perturbations in speech, and explore how language background and musical competence modulate CF0 perception; (2) examine whether tonal inventory influence CF0 production in tone languages; (3) examine whether CF0 perception systematically informs pitch production. Methods will include corpus analyses and experiments employing forced choice, pitch-matching, speech shadowing, and altered auditory feedback paradigms. The project will deliver cross-linguistically comparable CF0 measures, models of perceived CF0, scalable online infrastructure for large-scale speech perception data collection, contributing to theories of auditory processing and tone development.