Effects of music attrition on English-Mandarin Chinese bilinguals’ lexical tone perception and production in a foreign language

• Main Author: Toh, Xin Ru
• Other Authors: Alice Hiu Dan Chan
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Humanities::Linguistics::Psycholinguistics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138264
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

To examine whether cognitive mechanisms for music and speech are domain-general or domain-specific, researchers have studied the effects of musical training on lexical tone pitch processing. However, few studies have studied the effects in the long-term and among tone language speakers. Hence, this study sought to understand the effects of music attrition on foreign tone language lexical tone perception and production among speakers with varying extents of tone language experience. 23 English-Mandarin Chinese bilinguals who were either ex-musicians or non-musicians completed a Cantonese lexical tone ABX discrimination task, a Cantonese lexical tone imitation task, as well as melodic and rhythmic AX discrimination tasks. Results showed that ex-musicians outperformed non-musicians in musical abilities and lexical tone perception, and that lexical tone perception accuracy was associated with both musical abilities and number of years of musical training. Although non-‘dialect’ speaking non-musicians performed the worst in musical abilities and lexical tone perception, ‘dialect’ speaking ex-musicians did not perform the best. Lastly, ex-musicians and non-musicians performed equally well in lexical tone production, and lexical tone production accuracy was not associated with lexical tone perception accuracy, musical abilities, or number of years of musical training. Overall, musical training confers enduring positive music-to-language transfer effects for foreign tone language lexical tone perception but not production. Furthermore, individuals with a greater extent of tone language experience and musical training do not show additional advantages.