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Lexical Tone Perception in Mandarin Chinese Speakers With Aphasia

  • Qiang Li

    Qiang Li is Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Fort Hays State University, in the US. His research interests have focused on language/speech production and comprehension.

    , Shuang Wang

    Shuang Wang is Speech-Language Pathologist of Union Hospital Tongji Medical College at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Her research efforts have focused on speech and language therapy.

    , Yunling Du

    Yunling Du is a master student of School of Foreign Languages at Dalian University of Technology. Her research interests have focused on applied linguistics.

    and Nicole Müller

    Nicole Müller is Professor and Head of Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at University College Cork, in Ireland. Her research efforts have been in a wide range of communication disorders such as dementia.

Published/Copyright: April 20, 2021
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Abstract

The brain localization debate of lexical tone processing concerns functional hypothesis that lexical tone, owing to its strong linguistic features, is dominant in the left hemisphere, and acoustic hypothesis that all pitch patterns, including lexical tone, are dominant in the right hemisphere due to their acoustic features. Lexical tone as a complex signal contains acoustic components that carry linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonlinguistic information. To examine these two hypotheses, the current study adopted triplet stimuli including Chinese characters, their corresponding pinyin with a diacritic, and the four diacritics representing Chinese lexical tones. The stimuli represent the variation of lexical tone for its linguistic and acoustic features. The results of a listening task by Mandarin Chinese speakers with and without aphasia support the functional hypothesis that pitch patterns are lateralized to different hemispheres of the brain depending on their functions, with lexical tone to the left hemisphere as a function of linguistic features.

About the authors

Qiang Li

Qiang Li is Assistant Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Fort Hays State University, in the US. His research interests have focused on language/speech production and comprehension.

Shuang Wang

Shuang Wang is Speech-Language Pathologist of Union Hospital Tongji Medical College at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Her research efforts have focused on speech and language therapy.

Yunling Du

Yunling Du is a master student of School of Foreign Languages at Dalian University of Technology. Her research interests have focused on applied linguistics.

Nicole Müller

Nicole Müller is Professor and Head of Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences at University College Cork, in Ireland. Her research efforts have been in a wide range of communication disorders such as dementia.

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Published Online: 2021-04-20
Published in Print: 2021-03-26

© 2021 FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy

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