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dc.contributor.advisorSereno, Joan
dc.contributor.authorLee, Yu Ju
dc.date.accessioned2008-07-31T04:14:04Z
dc.date.available2008-07-31T04:14:04Z
dc.date.issued2008-03-17
dc.date.submitted2008
dc.identifier.otherhttp://dissertations.umi.com/ku:2384
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1808/4013
dc.description.abstractThe present study used a direct priming task in order to investigate the nature and processing of tonal information in spoken word recognition of Chinese. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, prime-target pairs contrasted in terms of tonal and segmental overlap. Experiment 1 replicated the first experiment of C.-Y. Lee's (2007) study but with a significant modification that balanced tonal information in prime-target pairs. Forty-eight monosyllabic Mandarin target words were paired with four types of primes in which prime and target were identical (e.g., bo1- bo1), shared only segmental information (e.g., bo1 -bo2), shared only tonal information (e.g., bo1 -zhua1) or were unrelated (e.g., bo1 -man3). Experiment 2 extended the prime-target paradigm to include minimal segmental overlap in onset and in offset portion. Forty-eight monosyllabic Mandarin target words were paired with four types of primes in which prime and target were identical (e.g., bo1- bo1), shared tonal and only onset segmental information (e.g., bo1 -bin1), shared tonal and only offset segmental information (e.g., bo1 -po1) or were unrelated (e.g., bo1 -man3). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the facilitation effect was found when the prime-target pairs were identical or segmental structure overlapped compared to conditions where the prime-target pairs only overlapped in tone or were unrelated. Effects of similarity of tone across prime-target segmental pairs were also analyzed. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the facilitation effect was only found when the prime-target pairs were identical. Partial segmental overlap in conjunction with tone resulted in inhibition compared to an unrelated control. Together, these data indicate that segmental information can facilitate word recognition, with segmental information carrying more weight than tonal information in the processing of spoken Chinese.
dc.format.extent82 pages
dc.language.isoEN
dc.publisherUniversity of Kansas
dc.rightsThis item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
dc.subjectLanguage, linguistics
dc.titleThe role of lexical tone in spoken word recognition of Chinese
dc.typeThesis
dc.thesis.degreeDisciplineLinguistics
dc.thesis.degreeLevelM.A.
kusw.oastatusna
kusw.oapolicyThis item does not meet KU Open Access policy criteria.
dc.rights.accessrightsopenAccess


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