Thai lexical tone perception in native speakers of Thai, English and Mandarin Chinese: an event-related potentials training study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Tone languages such as Thai and Mandarin Chinese use differences in fundamental frequency (F0, pitch) to distinguish lexical meaning. Previous behavioral studies have shown that native speakers of a non-tone language have difficulty discriminating among tone contrasts and are sensitive to different F0 dimensions than speakers of a tone language. The aim of the present ERP study was to investigate the effect of language background and training on the non-attentive processing of lexical tones. EEG was recorded from 12 adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, 12 native speakers of American English, and 11 Thai speakers while they were watching a movie and were presented with multiple tokens of low-falling, mid-level and high-rising Thai lexical tones. High-rising or low-f

SUBMITTER: Kaan E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2483720 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature