Lexical tone in non-fluent Chinese-speaking aphasics.
Item
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Title
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Lexical tone in non-fluent Chinese-speaking aphasics.
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Identifier
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AAI9432340
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identifier
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9432340
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Creator
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Huie, Nancy Eng.
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Contributor
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Advisers: Loraine K. Obler | Katherine S. Harris | Arthur S. Abramson
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Date
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1994
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Health Sciences, Speech Pathology
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Abstract
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Studies of Western languages have suggested that language abilities are functions of the left hemisphere while non-linguistic abilities such as tone appreciation are functions of the right hemisphere. However, in tone languages, tone is a phoneme which can distinguish among lexemes. Thus this "melodic" element plays a linguistic role. Aphasia studies with speakers of tonal languages have suggested that like segmental language phenomena, tone is also subject to deficit following damage to the left hemisphere. The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of aphasic speakers of Toisanese Chinese to perceive and produce lexical tone. Normal native speakers and non-fluent aphasic speakers of Toisanese participated in single syllable word production and perception tasks. Word productions from both speaker groups were subjected to acoustical measurements of various parameters of pitch contour and to a native listener word identification task. Values for F0 height and tone duration were obtained from the acoustical measurements. Accuracy scores from native listeners' responses to single word productions were derived; these scores indicated the success of speakers' attempts to signal lexical tone. Confusion matrices were constructed to observe possible patterns of tone confusion. While no statistically significant effects or variables were noted, a closer analysis of individual speakers' data revealed that although aphasic speakers attempted to distinguish among the five tones of Toisanese, these attempts were not readily perceived by native listeners. Moreover, there is a pattern of confusion among the tones of Toisanese in addition to uneven levels of perceptibility among these tones. Findings also revealed that there is difficulty in the perception of lexical tones among aphasic speakers and to a lesser degree, among normal, native listeners.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
