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The Effect of Musical Experience and Congenital Amusia on Lexical Tone Perception, Production, and Learning: A Review

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Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition

Part of the book series: Chinese Language Learning Sciences ((CLLS))

Abstract

Adults who are naïve to tone languages show a large variability in their ability to perceive, produce, and learn lexical tones, the building blocks of tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese. This review will focus on examining the variability from a musical perspective by reviewing behavioural and neuroimaging studies that compare listeners with extensive musical training, listeners with musical disorders such as amusia, and naïve/control listeners. Such a comparison allows us to determine whether there are any cross-domain transfer effects, and if so, what aspects in lexical tone perception, production, and learning are affected and why such facilitation or hindrance may occur. Understanding this will not only deepen our understanding of the commonalities and differences between language and music but also have implications for tone language learning. The review concludes with several future directions in this area of research.

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Acknowledgements

The research was supported by Ministry of Education Tier 1 (159/14) and Tier 2 (MOE2015-T2-1-120) grants awarded to A.H.D. Chan, and Ministry of Education Tier 1 (RG72/17) grant awarded to F.C.K. Wong.

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  1. Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Jia Hoong Ong, Shen Hui Tan, Alice H. D. Chan & Francis C. K. Wong

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  1. Jia Hoong Ong
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  2. Shen Hui Tan
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  3. Alice H. D. Chan
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  4. Francis C. K. Wong
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Correspondence to Francis C. K. Wong .

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  1. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Huei‐Mei Liu

  2. National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Feng‐Ming Tsao

  3. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Ping Li

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Ong, J.H., Tan, S.H., Chan, A.H.D., Wong, F.C.K. (2020). The Effect of Musical Experience and Congenital Amusia on Lexical Tone Perception, Production, and Learning: A Review. In: Liu, H., Tsao, F., Li, P. (eds) Speech Perception, Production and Acquisition. Chinese Language Learning Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7606-5_8

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