Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2002. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 130 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-118).

Emergence of accuracy is a first step toward acquiring adult-like phonological abilities. Mandarin Chinese is a tone language where speakers employ both tonal and segmental properties to code lexical meanings. Study of this dual-level complexity of tone and segment enables a broader view of how phonology is acquired than the view afforded by study of Indo-European languages. Understanding the interaction between phonatory properties for tone and articulatory adjustments for segments in emergence of early words helps to understand more generally the first steps toward the complex system embodied in phonology. The present study investigated tone acquisition in relation to segmental and lexical development in Mandarin-speaking children in the earliest word stages. Spontaneous speech samples were collected longitudinally from 12 to 24 months from four Mandarin-speaking children. The relationships between tone accuracy, segmental accuracy, and word-level variables were examined quantitatively over time. Results indicated that tone accuracy is not always higher than segmental accuracy. The relationship between these two seems to be influenced by the physiological complexity of tonal shapes and children’s developmental age. Autonomy of control over phonatory adjustments for tone and articulatory adjustments for segments was already apparent. Children were not sensitive to the contrastivity (characterized by Productive Tone Neighborhood Density) involved in tonal categories with a vocabulary of less than 50 words. Associations between production accuracy and word-level variables (articulatory complexity, neighborhood density and word frequency) established based on later developmental periods were not found in younger Mandarin-speaking children. Findings suggest that tonal acquisition at the onset of speech development is not a passive process where innate phonological knowledge is revealed solely through children’s maturation. Rather, phonological knowledge is established on the basis of children’s pre-linguistic motor capacities in concert with cognitive learning occurring via the expansion of their lexicon. Tones and segments may be produced as holistic entities in early words. Tone acquisition at the onset of word learning is more child-centered in that availability of tonal forms to the child’s production system underlies accuracy. Influences from lexical properties of word would only be apparent when phonological knowledge of tonal categories is established with vocabulary expansion. / text

abstract / Music / Master / Master of Philosophy

Tone matching, judgment and segmental judgment tasks conducted in silent reading and listening conditions are devised to test the hypothesis that musical training improves tone and segmental (onset, rime) perception in a tone language, Cantonese, in native Cantonese-speaking individuals. Four-word sequences (in which two words are primes and two are targets, or three words are primes and one is target) were presented to three groups of participants: professional musicians, amateur musicians and non-musicians in the silent reading condition, whereas four sound stimuli of Chinese characters were presented in the listening condition, and their accuracy and response time were recorded. Musicians, both professional and amateur, performed significantly better in tone and segmental perception than their musically naïve counterparts. Moreover, the response time exhibited a contrastive pattern in the two conditions: musicians tended to respond faster in the silent reading condition, but took a longer time in the listening condition. These results clearly demonstrate that musical training facilitated the perceptual processing of Cantonese tone and segmental phonemes by native Cantonese- speakers. Music-to-language transfer effects are highlighted and the non-significant differences exhibited between professional musicians and amateur musicians in five out of six tasks show that musical training need not be pursued to an advanced level for participants to gain perceptual benefits. The results shed light on possible forms of remedial programme development and interventions for children with language disorders such as dyslexia. / published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Graduate

Previous research on Sumi, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the extreme northeast of India, has found it to have three lexical tones. However, the few phonological studies of Sumi have focused mainly on its segmental phonology and have failed to provide any substantial account of the tone system. This thesis addresses the issue by providing the first comprehensive description of tone in this language. In addition to confirming three contrastive tones, this study also presents the first acoustic phonetic analysis of Sumi, looking at the phonetic realisation of these tones and the effects of segmental perturbations on tone realisation. The first autosegmental representation of Sumi tone is offered, allowing us to account for tonal phenomena such as the assignment of surface tones to prefixes that appear to be lexically unspecified for tone. Finally, this investigation presents the first account of morphologically conditioned tone variation in Sumi, finding regular paradigmatic shifts in the tone on verb roots that undergo nominalisation. / The thesis also offers a cross-linguistic comparison of the tone system of Sumi with that of other closely related Kuki-Chin-Naga languages and some preliminary observations of the historical origin and development of tone in these languages are made. This is accompanied by a typological comparison of these languages with other Tibeto-Burman languages, which shows that although these languages are spoken in what has been termed the ‘Indosphere’, their tone systems are similar to those of languages spoken further to the east in the ‘Sinosphere’. Finally, a more global typological comparison of Sumi with ‘African’ and ‘East Asian’ tone languages demonstrates that Sumi displays features typically associated with both these language ‘types’. This finding suggests the need to re-evaluate this traditional dichotomy of tone systems, and the need to consider morphological structure in typologies of tone.

Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2005." Also available in print.

Thesis (B.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2003. / "A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, April 30, 2003." Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-28) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-214).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also in a digital version from UMI/Dissertation Abstracts International.