Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2012 Jun;131(6):4756-69. doi: 10.1121/1.4714355.
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.
成人的非母语言语感知受到多种因素的影响，包括语言和非语言经验，如音乐训练。本研究考察了语言和音乐因素如何影响非母语单词识别和声调感知。母语为声调语言（泰语）和非声调语言（英语）的受试者分为音乐家和非音乐家两组，接受粤语声调词训练。参与者在训练中学习识别通过五个粤语声调最小区分的单词，同时完成音乐能力和音位声调识别任务。首先，研究结果表明，与既没有音乐训练也没有声调语言经验的人相比，无论是音乐经验还是声调语言背景都能显著提高非母语单词学习的熟练度。此外，与单独的音乐经验或声调语言经验相比，声调语言和音乐经验的结合并没有为泰国音乐家提供额外的优势。音乐能力对于声调识别比声调语言背景更有优势。最后，声调识别和音乐能力得分与英语学习者的单词学习成功显著相关，但与泰语学习者无关。这些发现指向音乐和语言经验的动态影响，既在声调识别水平上，也在单词学习阶段。
