Perceptual effects of lexical competition on Cantonese tone categories

Listeners use lexical information and the speech signal to categorize sounds recognize words despite substantial acoustic-phonetic variation in natural speech. In diachronic mergers, where systematic acts neutralize contrasts, role of lexicon becomes less clear. We examined how competition structures phonetic variability (merging) tone categories Cantonese using three experiments. categorized tokens from continua generated minimal pairs (Experiment 1: Word identification) word-nonword 2: Lexical decision). The presence a competitor at both continuum endpoints Experiment 1 maintained more discrete categorization functions for non-merging than 2 only one endpoint was word. merging pairs, effect different. Exploratory data goodness rating task, 3, suggest that affects internal category structure tones, but not tones. Overall, these provide evidence mergers affect boundaries lexicon, that, range acceptable is constrained by competitor.