Speaking in Tones: The role of lexical tones in Chinese-speaking Primary Progressive Aphasia.

ABSTRACT: Two-thirds of the world's languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese, employ pitch variation to convey meaning (lexical tone). Existing diagnostic frameworks for primary progressive aphasia (PPA) have been developed for English speakers, and have not considered the impact of salient language-specific variations, such as tone. This study investigates lexical tone processing in Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking individuals with PPA and examines their neural signatures using structural neuroimaging.

Methods

Seventy-eight native Chinese speakers (54 with PPA; 24 healthy controls) were assessed using the CLAP (Chinese Language Assessment for PPA) battery, a series of neuropsychological and linguistic tasks developed to characterize the linguistic features of Mandarin and Cantonese speake

SUBMITTER: Tee BL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12636694 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature