During verbal communication, humans decode not only what is said but also why. Previous research has shown that specific prosodic patterns in a speaker’s voice transmit these communicative intentions. It remains, however, unclear whether these patterns are understood across cultures and languages. This is particularly relevant for interactions between speakers of tonal and non-tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese and German, which differ in their lexical vs. pragmatic use of pitch. In this series of behavioural experiments, we investigated the extent and origins of cross-linguistic prosodic misunderstandings, and whether they could be alleviated either by musical training known to improve prosody perception or by exposure to the non-native language and culture.
German and Chinese listeners categorized (Experiment 1) and rated (Experiment 2) six intentions (e.g., suggestion, criticism, wish) expressed prosodically by native speakers of German and Mandarin Chinese uttering disyllabic words. Accuracy and confusion patterns suggest that both listener groups use decoding strategies specific to their native language, that are partly inadequate to understand intentions in non-native prosody, although a range of common acoustic cues to intentions in both languages secure basic cross-linguistic comprehension. A comparison between musicians and nonmusicians (Experiment 3), and between Chinese listeners with and without German cultural experience (Experiment 4) suggest that, even though musical training may sharpen the auditory encoding of prosodic cues, cultural exposure may be necessary to increase awareness for non-native cues in a speaker’s voice and to support mutual understanding.