The learning of lexical tones.

Abstract

Our understanding of speech perception suggests that categorization is an essential task of our cognitive system. Based on previous research on segment perception, this study explores the questions of what mechanism is involved in the acquisition of lexical tones and whether contour tones are decompositional in the process of cognitive learning. An experiment adopting the statistical training method from Maye et al. (2002) and Hayes-Harb (2007) was conducted on the learning of lexical tones by adult naive tone learners. The results show that statistical distribution of stimuli along a pitch continuum in training affects naive tone learners’ formation of level lexical tone categories. In addition, the perception of level tones behaves more like the perception of vowels rather than consonants. Moreover, exposure to statistical training on a level tone continuum alone affects participants’ performance in contour tone discrimination. This indicates that participants were able to apply level tone categories to generate new mental categories of contour tones, providing psychological evidence for the auto-segmental argument that contour tones are composed of a sequence of multiple level tones.