The influence of linguistic and musical experience on Cantonese word learning

Abstract

Adult non-native speech perception is subject to influence from multiple factors, including linguistic and extralinguistic experience such as musical training. The present research examines how linguistic and musical factors influence non-native word identification and lexical tone perception. Groups of native tone language (Thai) and non-tone language listeners (English), each subdivided into musician and non-musician groups, engaged in Cantonese tone word training. Participants learned to identify words minimally distinguished by five Cantonese tones during training, also completing musical aptitude and phonemic tone identification tasks. First, the findings suggest that either musical experience or a tone language background leads to significantly better non-native word learning proficiency, as compared to those with neither musical training nor tone language experience. Moreover, the combination of tone language and musical experience did not provide an additional advantage for Thai musicians above and beyond either experience alone. Musicianship was found to be more advantageous than a tone language background for tone identification. Finally, tone identification and musical aptitude scores were significantly correlated with word learning success for English but not Thai listeners. These findings point to a dynamic influence of musical and linguistic experience, both at the tone dentification level and at the word learning stage.

Effects of tone training on Cantonese tone-word learning

“…Given that previous research has primarily examined the influence of shortterm pitch experience on lower-level abilities such as phoneme identification (Francis et al, 2008;Wang et al, 1999), the current study extends the earlier work of Cooper and Wang (2012) by investigating the effect of short-term pitch experience on higherlevel lexical (Cantonese tone-word 1 ) learning by training native English speakers on Cantonese tones prior to a tone-word learning program. The results are compared to the English musicians and non-musicians from Cooper and Wang (2012), who completed only the tone-word learning program, to examine how listeners with short-term pitch experience compare to listeners with and without significant (musical) pitch experience.…”

“…The participants included 32 native English speakers, who had not previously participated in the Cooper and Wang (2012) study, with no prior experience with Cantonese or any other lexical tone language. They self-reported normal hearing and cognitive abilities and were all non-musicians ("N"), defined as having less than 3 yr of musical experience and no experience within the last 5 yr (Wong and Perrachione, 2007).…”

“…The importance of acoustic information for speech learning has been demonstrated with both infants (Werker et al, 2002) and adults (Cooper and Wang, 2012;Wong and Perrachione, 2007). Wong and Perrachione (2007) reported that listeners who were highly proficient at identifying pitch patterns, as a result of long-term musical experience, were the most successful learners of vocabulary items distinguished by lexical tones.…”

“…The results are compared to the English musicians and non-musicians from Cooper and Wang (2012), who completed only the tone-word learning program, to examine how listeners with short-term pitch experience compare to listeners with and without significant (musical) pitch experience. The phonetic-phonological-lexical continuity hypothesis would predict that improving listeners' tonal awareness and lower-level phonetic abilities through tone training should result in their achieving greater success in a subsequent tone-word learning program relative to non-musician listeners who did not receive any tone training.…”

Pronunciation proficiency and musical aptitude in Spanish as a foreign language: results of an experimental research project

“…linguistic pitch discrimination (Marques, Moreno, Castro & Besson, 2007;Lee & Hung, 2008;Cooper & Wang, 2012), segmental and tonal processing (Marie, Delogu, Lampis, Belardinelli & Besson, 2011), and congruous prosody discrimination (Wong, Skoe, Russo, Dees & Kraus, 2007). Similar studies were conducted with babies and children who received musical training before taking a language test in contrast with a control group (Magne, Schön & Besson, 2006;Forgeard, Schlaug, Norton, Rosam, Iyengar & Winner, 2008;Moreno, Marques, Santos, Castro & Besson, 2009;Chobert, Clément, Velay & Besson, 2012;François, Chobert, Besson & Schön, 2013).…”