Perception of linguistic pitch in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers

This study investigated the perception of linguistic pitch in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers. Two age groups of bilingual speakers (age 10-13 and age 20-23) were recruited and attended the experiment which included three sessions: Cantonese lexical tone perception test, English lexical stress perception test, the mixed mode test of lexical tone and lexical stress. The stimuli were fifty-five CVCV non-words with fifteen different tone contrasts in lexical tone test, and with initial stressed or final stressed in lexical stress test. The results showed that adults performed significantly better than the children in both lexical tone and lexical stress perception. Children had similar performance in tone and stress perception but adults performed better in stress perception than tone perception. The tone contrasts of mid level-low level, and high rising-low rising were the most difficult to discriminate for both children and adults. Findings suggest that bilingual speakers used the same perception strategy in perceiving linguistic pitch of lexical stress and lexical tone and the language experience still affected and improved the suprasegmental acquisition after age of 10-13.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Tone discrimination of Cantonese and Mandarin between tonal and non-tonal speakers

This study investigated the perception of Cantonese and Mandarin tones by both tonal and non-tonal language speakers. Eighty subjects were recruited from four language groups (native Cantonese, Mandarin, English and Cantonese listeners who are Mandarin naïve). There were two parts in this study: the first experiment focused on Cantonese tones, while the second experiment focused on Mandarin tones. Participants were asked to discriminate if there were any tone differences between two target words in carrier phrase. Results showed that linguistic background may not necessarily influence the perception of non-native tones, and if influence was present, it could be positive or negative. Erroneous tone patterns from different native language groups were compared in regard to their native language’s tone inventory and also in terms of psychoacoustic features. Other factors that may influence cross-language tone perceptions were also discussed.published_or_final_versionSpeech and Hearing SciencesBachelorBachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science

Percepção dos tons em Mandarim por falantes nativos do Português Europeu

O presente estudo visa investigar a percepção dos tons do Chinês Mandarim por falantes nativos do Português, determinar os fatores que condicionam a percepção dos tons, nomeadamente a natureza dos contrastes tonais (tipo de tom), a posição do tom (ordem) e a natureza do segmento em que o tom ocorre, e explorar a interação entre variação segmental e variação tonal na percepção dos tons. Para atingir esse objectivo, foi realizada uma tarefa de percepção em que os participantes avaliaram o grau de semelhança/diferença perceptiva dos contrastes tonais e segmentais. Os resultados mostraram que os falantes nativos do Português consideram que os pares que partilham características fonéticas parecidas, como é o caso dos pares T1T2 e T4T2, são mais difíceis de discriminar do que os restantes pares de tons. É possível que os falantes recorram mais à altura de F0 na discriminação dos tons, dado os pares com onset e offset semelhantes (e.g, T1T2, T2T1, T4T2 e T1T4) serem mais difíceis de discriminar. A posição do tom revelou-se um fator não significativo. Já quanto à presença de contraste segmental e contraste tonal, os resultados confirmaram que os participantes são mais sensíveis ao contraste segmental que ao contraste tonal. Para além disso, o efeito do tom também foi significativo, pois pares com segmentos diferentes e tons diferentes, ou segmentos iguais e tons diferentes, foram percepcionados como sendo mais diferentes que, respectivamente, pares com segmentos diferentes e tons iguais ou pares com segmentos iguais e tons iguais. Por outras palavras, os falantes do Português não são “tone deaf”. Diferenças verificadas quanto ao tempo de reação nas condições tom igual e tom diferente apontam no mesmo sentido. Foi observado ainda que os falantes nativos de Português têm mais dificuldades na discriminação de tons quando a vogal é ‘A’ do que com a vogal é ‘I’. Esse resultado não era esperado e poderá dever-se ao facto de a produção de ‘I’ com os vários tons ser mais estável do que ‘A’ em Mandarim.The present study aims to investigate the perception of Mandarin tones by Portuguese native speakers, establish the factors that affect tone perception, namely the type of tone contrast, tone order, and the type of segment that bears the tone, as well as explore the interaction between segment variation and tone variation in tone perception. To this end, a perception task was performed in which participants were asked to assess the degree of similarity/difference of tone and segment contrasts. The results have shown that tone pairs sharing similar phonetic properties, like T1T2 and T4T2, are the most difficult to discriminate. This suggests that listeners use F0 height as the main perceptual cue, since pairs with similar F0 onset and offset (e.g., T1T2, T2T1, T4T2 and T1T4) are considered more similar than the others. Tone order was found not to be a significant factor for tone perception. By contrast, the difference between segmental and tonal contrasts was relevant. Listeners were more sensitive to the former than the latter. In addition, there was a main effect of tone, with better discrimination of pairs with a tonal contrast than without, other things being equal. This shows that Portuguese native speakers are not “tone deaf”. Differences in reaction time between the same and different tone conditions further support this finding. It was also found that native speakers of Portuguese have more difficulties in discriminating tone pairs with the vowel 'A' than with the vowel 'I'. This result was not expected. A possible explanation is that the production of the vowel ‘I’ with the various tones is more stable than the vowel ‘A’, in Mandarin

Is It All Relative? Relative Pitch and L2 Lexical Tone Perception/Tone Language Comprehension by Adult Tone and Non-Tone Language Speakers

Languages generally use musical pitch variation of the voice as part of their sound systems (Maddieson, 2011)—pitch variations that can be somewhat reminiscent of music. Music ability and/or training may influence language processing (e.g., Bidelman et al, 2011; Delogue et al, 2010). In particular, studies have concluded that there may be a relationship between absolute pitch and tone language acquisition (e.g., Lee, Lee, and Shi, 2011; Tillmann et al., 2011; Pfordresher and Brown, 2009). Other research has shown that fundamental frequency (F0) and F0 slope are crucial elements upon which native tone language speakers rely in tone perception (Guion and Pederson, 2007). With the given observations in mind, we could infer that an important tool in tone language processing and/or acquisition would be the ability to identify the relationship between notes (relative pitch ability). This study endeavors to explore the possible relationship between relative pitch aptitude or ability and adult L2 lexical tone perception/tone language comprehension. This study tested native Thai, Mandarin Chinese, and English-only speakers to determine each group’s relative pitch proficiency and the possible correlation between this proficiency and lexical tone perception and tone language comprehension. The results of this study reveal that tone language speakers are more proficient at relative pitch perception. In addition, Thai speakers are more adept at perceiving the four lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese as well as perceiving Mandarin Chinese words than English-only speakers. Finally, this study found a moderate positive correlation between relative pitch proficiency and lexical tone perception for the English-only speakers but not for the Thai speakers. These findings lead to the conclusion that relative pitch proficiency may be relevant to non-tone language speakers endeavoring to learn a tone language

Can an Accelerated Intervention Close the School Readiness Gap for Disadvantaged Children? An Evaluation of the Effects of the LEARN Project’s Summer Pre-Primary Program on Literacy Outcomes in Northern Lao PDR

Developed against the backdrop of Sustainable Development Goal 4, as well as a global trend towards rigorous assessment of early childhood programs, this thesis answers questions about the effects of an accelerated school readiness intervention for non-Lao children in disadvantaged communities of Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Through a longitudinal, cluster randomized control trial, the study employs multi-level regression with an analytical sample of 391 children to examine the outcomes of a summer pre-primary program piloted from 2015-2018 by the Lao government with support from Plan International and Save the Children International in the Dubai-Cares funded Lao Educational Access, Research, and Networking (LEARN) Project. Research questions are investigated through a design in which the same panel of children are assessed against a control group at three intervals using the Measurement of Development and Early Learning. The thesis identifies significant associations between receiving the treatment and achieving higher gain scores on several emergent literacy tasks between baseline and midline, with effects roughly in line with similar interventions in other contexts. At the same time, the thesis finds that those effects had largely faded by endline. An interaction between treatment and ethnicity was only evident in a few instances, suggesting that the intervention may have boosted school readiness for Khmu children more by the start of grade 1 and for Hmong children more during grade 1. The thesis raises important recommendations about how to improve the fit between the ultimate objectives of accelerated interventions, the evaluations they undergo, and the needs of the broader education system. New contributions to knowledge are also found by interrogating a global assessment paradigm through a comparative linguistic lens, so that forthcoming evaluations benefit from the lessons learned based on LEARN’s attempt to fit a square peg into a unique alpha-syllabic, tonal Southeast Asian language