Mandarin citation tone patterns of prelingual Chinese deaf adults

Abstract

The present study examined the citation patterns of Mandarin tones in prelingual deaf adults with cochelar implants or hearing aids. The results showed that the participants tried to build up tonal pattern by exploring phonetic features such as creaky voice and tonal duration. The results also indicated that although the participants had problems distinguishing T2 from T3, T2 was harder than T3 for them. In fact, T2 was the hardest of all Mandarin tones for these prelingual deaf adults.