For nearly a century, linguists have suggested that diachronic merger is less likely between
phonemes with a high functional load–that is, phonemes that distinguish many words in the …

Ground-breaking studies on how Bangkok Thai tones have changed over the past 100 years
(,;) reveal a pattern that term the “clockwise tone shift cycle:” low> falling> high level or rising …

All languages use individually meaningless, contrastive categories in combination to create
distinct words. Despite their central role in communication, these “phoneme” contrasts can …

Multiple-level tone contrasts are typologically disfavoured because they violate the
dispersion principles of maximizing perceptual distance and minimizing articulatory effort …

Purpose This study examined the effects of lexical tone contour on the intelligibility of
Mandarin sentences in quiet and in noise. Method A text-to-speech synthesis engine was …

Phonation is used in many tonal languages, but how it should be incorporated into tonal
systems is not well understood. The purpose of this dissertation thus is to examine the role of …

This study investigates the relationship between music and speech, testing whether musical
training has any facilitatory effects on native tone language speakers. Some Cantonese tone …

The lack of invariance problem in speech perception refers to a fundamental problem of how
listeners deal with differences of speech sounds produced by various speakers. The current …

This study uses the Perceptual Assimilation Model for Suprasegmentals (PAM-S)(So & Best,
2008, 2010), supported by the assumptions of the L2 Intonation Learning theory (LILt …

This study investigated the similarities and differences in perception of Cantonese tones and
English stress patterns by Cantonese-English bilingual children, adults, and English …