Adult non-native perception is subject to influence from a variety of factors, including native language and musical experience. The present study investigates the influence of these two factors in the perception and learning of non-native lexical tones. Native Thai-speaking musicians and nonmusicians completed pre- and post-test identification tasks on five Cantonese tones, with 4 days of lexical identification training. Higher identification accuracy scores for musicians suggest that extensive experience with musical pitch enhances perception of non-native linguistic pitch. However, patterns of tonal accuracy improvement were similar across groups and can be attributed to the influence of the L1 tonal system.
Index Terms: lexical tone, musical experience, Cantonese, non-native perception
Cite as: Cooper, A., Wang, Y. (2010) The role of musical experience in Cantonese lexical tone perception by native speakers of Thai. Proc. Speech Prosody 2010, paper 184
@inproceedings{cooper10_speechprosody,
author={Angela Cooper and Yue Wang},
title={{The role of musical experience in Cantonese lexical tone perception by native speakers of Thai}},
year=2010,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2010},
pages={paper 184}
}