Lexical tone perception in native speakers of Cantonese

Abstract

Purpose. This study aimed at investigating (1) tone perception development among typically-developing Cantonese speakers and (2) the hierarchy of tone perception difficulty among the 15 tone contrasts.

Method. Two-hundred typically-developing children aged 3–10 and a group of 25 normal hearing adults were recruited. They were tested on a pool of 75-item calibrated recorded speech signals. Participants responded to each stimulus by pointing at the corresponding picture displayed on a computer screen from a choice of four.

Result. There was a gradual increase in tone perception accuracy from children aged 3–6. After age 6, tone perception accuracy was similar to adults with an average error rate of 3–8%. The two tone contrasts that listeners consistently found difficult to distinguish were T2T5 (high-rising vs low-rising) and T3T6 (mid-level vs low-level). In addition, all children groups also showed difficulty in T4T6 identification (low-falling vs low-level).

Conclusion. Tone perception is not error-free even among native Cantonese-speaking adults. Overall tone identification performance improved steadily from age 3 to age 6. Based on the participants’ performance, a three-tier set of tone groups, with an increasing level of difficulty for identification, is proposed for rehabilitation purposes. These tone groups are (1) Easy: T1T2, T1T3, T1T4, T1T5, T1T6, and T2T3, (2) Medium: T2T4, T2T6, T3T4, and T4T5, and (3) Hard: T2T5, T3T5, T3T6, T4T6, and T5T6.

Keywords::

• Tone
• lexical tone perception
• Cantonese
• tone contrast difficulty
• three-tier tone groups
• ease of tone identification
• acquisition

Acknowledgements

The work described in this paper was partially supported by a grant from the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project no. CUHK446207). We sincerely appreciate the participation of the children and parents in the study. We would also like to thank Dr David Wilmshurst for commenting on the draft of this paper.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.