AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE / 广东话声调理解的年龄影响

Author(s): Rosemary Varley, 华莉莉, Lydia K.H. So and 苏周简开

Source: Journal of Chinese Linguistics , June 1995, Vol. 23, No. 2 (June 1995), pp. 76-98
Published by: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press on behalf of Project on
Linguistic Analysis

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23756540

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 AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE*

Rosemary Varlcy
University of Sheffield, U.K.
Lydia K.H. So
University of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Subjects drawn from three age bands completed a lexical

comprehension test for Cantonese. The test required subjects to select a
target word from three distractors. Age effects emerged on the test.
Factors which had to be considered in the interpretation of this effect
included, in addition to age, educational and occupational level, and
language history. Older subjects had particular difficulty in making tonal
discriminations. Tonal confusions occurred when tone pairs had similar
heights, contours or both. The possibility that older subjects have
difficulty in making tonal discriminations when words are presented in
isolation is discussed. The importance of placing a lexical item in a
linguistic context in order to provide relative tonal information for older
subjects is considered.

There are many materials to assess components and levels of

language functioning in speakers of a number of the Indo-European
languages and especially English. Such materials are valuable to the
speech-language pathologist in identifying abnormality in communication
and planning remediation of that abnormality. Awareness of the need for
assessment of communication disorders and the possibility of remediation

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 77

of those disorders is increasing in areas of the world where the first

language of the majority of speakers is not of the Indo-European group.
In such instances, there is a need for the development of language
assessment measures to assist the work of the speech-language
pathologist and also others who are involved in psycholinguistic research.
In this paper, we report an attempt to produce a lexical comprehension
test for Cantonese.

Cantonese is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family and is a

tone language, i.e. changing the tone of a syllable can lead to a change in
meaning. The tonal system of Cantonese consists of six contrastive tones
together with three further "clipped" or ”entering*1 tones. These,
however, are regarded as phonetic variants of the three level tones (Fok
1974). The tones can be differentiated from each other by pitch height
and the direction of movement of pitch. There are three level tones (low,
mid and high level) and three contour tones (high rise, low rise, and low
fall). There are a number of ways of representing these tones. Verbal
labels capturing the height and dynamics of the tone can be applied to
them as above, or alternatively, Chao (1947) assigned each of the tones a
numerical value, which captures the height of the tone (in terms of
fundamental frequency) and the direction of movement of the tone. A
value of five indicates high fundamental frequency, whilst one would be a
lower fundamental frequency. A second system of numerical labels is
also available and these alternative systems are presented in table 1.
Table 1. Classification systems of Cantonese Tones

Chao Notation Label

Tone 1 55/53 High level

Tone 2 35 High rise

Tone 3 33 Mid level

Tone 4 21 Low fall

Tone 5 23 Low rise

Tone 6 22 Low level

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78 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

Fok (1974) produced fundamental frequency tracings of the Cantones

tones and these are presented in figures 1 and 2.

. . , , . I L_

.1 .2 .3 "t .5
Figure 1: Tones of a fema
(By kind permission of the Director of

200llz

150Hz

Figure 2: Tones of a male speaker

(By kliul permlsftlon of the Oredor of tho Centra of Asian Studies. University of Hong Kong)

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 79

In order for the speaker of Cantonese to understand the meani

single word, it is necessary to decode the segmental phonology
input, to identify the tone attached to the syllable，and to m
derived segmental and suprasegmental phonological representat
semantic representation. Failure at any stage in this process would
in a failure to decode the input or perhaps the interpretation of t
as a semantically or phonologically related word. When faced
lexical processing failures in language disordered individuals, it is
important to be able to identify the source of the failure. This permits any
remedial intervention to be focused at the deficient processing skill.
Bishop and Byng (1984) discuss a number of issues in the construction of
assessments of lexical comprehension. They stress the importance of
including a heterogeneous distractor set. Rather than establishing tonal
processing ability on a test which includes only a tonal minimal pair as
target and distractor, it is important to include other types of distractor.
It is quite possible that an individual who has difficulty mapping a
phonological representation to the correct semantic representation will
perform at chance level on a "tone comprehension" test, but it would be
erroneous to attribute this failure to tonal processing problems. With this
fact in mind，the lexical processing test devised for Cantonese included a
mixed set of distractors. In addition to the target item，tonal and
segmental phonological distractors were included, together with a
semantic distractor.

The processing of tonal information by speakers of Cantonese is of

obvious interest. A number of studies have investigated aspects of tonal
processing in Chinese languages. Acquisitional studies by Chao (1951),
Li and Thompson (1977) and Tse (1978) have established that both the
input processing and production of suprasegmental aspects of phonology
begin early and acquisition is complete long before adult-like competence
in segmental phonology is attained. Tse found that at the very early
stages of lexical acquisition (10 months) his subject Y.L could match a

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80 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

word to its referent if the tone and the segmental information were
correct and also if the tone was correct, but the segmental information
was incorrect. If the tonal information was altered, then Y.L failed to

decode the input. This would indicate primacy in the use of tonal
information in early acquisition. Tse also found that in output，Y.L had
fully established the Cantonese tonal system by the age of 1.9. This
points to the early acquisition of tone when compared to segmental
phonology.
Studies by Gandour (1983)，Hashimoto (1980) and Vance (1977)
have examined perceptual aspects of tonal processing in young adults.
Gandour used a paradigm which required subjects to make similarity
judgements between paired tones. Through a multidimensional scaling
procedure, Gandour identified two dimensions underlying similarity
judgements. The primary factor was fundamental frequency or pitch
height. A secondary dimension was the direction of movement or contour
of the fundamental frequency. Gandour noted that height of fundamental
frequency was particularly important in Cantonese speakers' perceptual
judgements because Cantonese has a number of tones which have a

similar contour and are separated only by height. Those separable by

height alone are the low level, low fall and mid-level tones (tones 6，4，

and 3), the high and mid-level pair (tones 1 and 3) and finally the rising
contour tones (tones 2 and 5). If one adds in the contour factor, tonal

pairs which have similar contours and little contrast in height are tones 4
and 6, tones 3 and 6，and tones 2 and 5. One would predict that
Cantonese speakers are more likely to make errors on discriminations
involving these pairs. Pairs with dissimilar contours and heights are less
likely to be confused, e.g. tones 1 and 2, or 4 and 2. Fok (1974) used a
paradigm which required subjects to match a heard word to one of six
written words, which had the same segmental form but were tonal
minimal pairs. She found that subjects aged between 15 and 21 years
scored at a 90% accuracy level on the task. Errors were largely in line

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 81

with the above predictions. Tones 2 and 5 were confused，as were

and 6, and Hnally tone 6 was misidentiHed as tone 4.
A further prediction regarding the hierarchy of difficulty
perception of tonal contrasts was put forward by Li and Tho
(1977). They suggest that rising tones are more difHcult in both
perception and production (i.e. tone 2 and 5 in Cantonese) than level or
falling tones. The evidence for this claim came from observation of the
sequence of tonal acquisition in Mandarin-speaking children, rising tones
being acquired later. In addition，Li and Thompson suggest other factors
point to the inherent difHculty of rising tones. These were that tonal
assimilation processes in tone languages often result in rising tones being
assimilated to falling tones and the higher incidence of level and falling
tones in the world's tonal languages.
In this paper, we report the results of a study which examined how
non-language disordered adults performed on a test of lexical
comprehension in Cantonese. The study was of interest because of the
issues it raised on the validity of single word level testing with speakers
of a tone language and factors relating to psycholinguistic research on a
population with diverse educational and language backgrounds. In
addition，Cantonese is a relatively under-researched language from a
psycholinguistic perspective. For example, the data-bases necessary for
well controlled psycholinguistic research, e.g. on imageability or word
frequency, are not available. This presents obvious difficulties in
research design. Solutions to such problems will be discussed in the
methodology section.
The subjects of the study were non-language disordered adults.
Three groups were included, a young adult group and two older adult
groups; one aged 50 - 59 years，and the second 60 - 69 years. Of interest
was whether any age effects emerged in performance on the lexical tests.
The aging process has a number of effects on cognitive systems. Sensory
receptors and pathways may operate with lowered efficiency. Aging

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82 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

within the auditory pathway may affect the efficiency of the processin
speech and other auditory input (Rupp 1980). Feldan and Reger (196
reported that speech discrimination was stable up to 50 years, but
showed gradual decrements over the subsequent decades. Due to cha
in the cochlear, high frequency auditory information is particular
susceptible to disruption. In speech processing，discrimination of
fricatives and other sounds involving high frequency components are
more liable to be disrupted. Tonal information is comparatively of lower
frequency (Kei, Smith，So & Cappell 1992) and potentially is less liable
to disruption with aging. However discriminations between tones involve
very fine contrasts. In addition to small differences in pitch height, in
order to perceive different tonal contours rapid processing is required. In
the face of slower information processing with increasing age, the
discrimination of tonal contrasts may become problematic.

1. METHODOLOGY

1.1. Subjects

The study was carried out in Hong Kong. Three groups of subjects
were recruited: a young adult group (N=30), and two older adult groups.
The older groups were divided into adults in the age range 50-59 years
(N=23) and adults of 60-69 years (N=23). Subjects had no reported
language or cognitive problems. All subjects reported their hearing was
normal, but this was not verified audiologically. Details of the gender，
mean age, and educational level and modal occupational classification are
presented in table 2.

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 83

Table 2. Subject Information

Mean Modal Canton - Home

Male Female Mean Educ.* SES+ ese LI Lang.

Group Age =Can.

20-30 13 17 24.8 13.7 III 29/30 29/30

50-59 12 11 53.7 5.7 V 21/23 23/23

60-69 14 9 64.0 3.9 V 17/23 23/23

• = years in formal education

+ = defined by the Classification of Occupations (1980)
I - professional II • intermediate occupations
III - skilled occupations IV - partially skilled
V • unskilled

Inspection of table 2 indicates that males and females were well

represented in all groups, but that educational and occupational level,
and language history were not well controlled, introducing potential
confounds into the results. Such confounds are largely unavoidable when
conducting psycholinguistic research on the older population of Hong
Kong. The data reflects demographic trend in Hong Kong. During and
following the Second World War, there was an influx of refugees from
the Chinese mainland into Hong Kong. Many of these new immigrants to
Hong Kong were from distant provinces and so their LI was not
Cantonese. In addition, many of these individuals had little access to
formal education. Low educational level is likely to correlate with low
socio-economic status. As a result of these factors, some care must be

taken in interpreting any results of the study. The differences between

groups are potentially significant on the Cantonese as LI dimension. Yiu
(1989) found that subjects whose LI was not Cantonese had significantly
greater difficulty in distinguishing tonal minimal pairs than subjects for
whom Cantonese was the mother-tongue.

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84 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

Of the total of eight subjects for whom Cantonese was not the LI, one
spoken Cantonese for over ten years, and the remaining seven fo
minimum of 20 years.

1.2. Materials

The lexical comprehension test contained 39 items. Each target item

was matched to create a tonal minimal pair, a segmental minimal pair
and a semantically related pair. The following criteria were imposed on
the stimulus words:

1. Early acquisition: the lack of databases on word frequency and

sequence of lexical acquisition in Cantonese present considerable
difficulty to those engaged in psycholinguistic research. In the
absence of such databases，we adopted the following solution in an
attempt to make the process of stimulus selection more systematic.
The Rcznick and Goldsmith norms of early lexical acquisition for
American children were used (Reznick & Goldsmith 1989). As early
vocabulary is often of relatively high frequency, high imageabiiity
and concreteness, use of such norms should assist in selecting a
stimulus set of comparable complexity.
2. Culture fair: stimuli and distractor items were familiar to

individuals living in Hong Kong. The vocabulary in the Reznick an

Goldsmith norms was screened for items which the investigators fe
were culturally biased and items such as snow’，’ oven’ and ' cheese'
were eliminated.

3. Picturability: the test used pictures as the response mode and

therefore all stimulus items and their distractors had to be highly
picturable. Non-picturable items were eliminated, leaving a set of
picturable items, which were predominantly nouns, with a few verbs
and adjectives.

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 85

From the remaining vocabulary, we identified items which form

minimal pair. Tonal minimal pairs were of identical segmental fo
differed only in tone to the stimulus. The Cantonese tone system
of six contrastive tones and we had hoped to find four minimal
each tone contrast in Cantonese, resulting in a total of 60 tonal m
pairs. This was not possible in view of the other criteria we
the selection of stimuli and distractors (see above). Where there were
few or no instances of a tonal minimal pair, we supplemented the data
derived from Reznick and Goldsmith with other vocabulary which the
investigators felt was highly familiar. 32 test items were derived from
the Reznick and Goldsmith norms and a further seven were subsequently
added. Included in the test are pairs which represent all possible tone
contrasts (see table 3), however the number of representatives of each
contrast varies between one (e.g. tones 3-6 (mid level-low level)) and
five (tones 1-2 (high level-high rise)). The shortage of instances of tone
4-6 pairs is unfortunate, as previous research had indicated that these
tones are particularly confusable due to similar heights and contours.
One member of the tonal pair was then designated as stimulus and
the second the tonal distractor. For example, stimulus - crab (蟹）/hai^/，
tonal distractor • shoe (鞋)/haiy. A segmental distractor was selected
for the stimulus item. In this instance，tone was held constant, but the

distractor differed in consonant or vowel features from the stimulus, e.g

stimulus -crab (蟹）/hai^/，segmental distractor - milk (奶）/nai5). The

distractor set was completed with the selection of an item from the same
semantic field as the stimulus to act as the semantic distractor, e.g.
stimulus • crab, semantic distractor • fish (魚)/jy^/. Ideally all distractor
items were also drawn from the Reznick and Goldsmith norms，but this
was not always possible. On these occasions, lexical items which the
investigators felt were highly familiar were used to supplement the
norms.

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 86 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

STIMULUS ITEMS FOR LEXICAL COMPREHENSION TEST IN CANTONESE

Tones High High Mid Low Low Low

level rise level fall rise level
5 pairs 3 pairs 4 pairs 2oairs 2 pairs

1. soeo «, IS* 1. reo ft, * 1. s^y »fc, £ 1. soeo ®. ± 1.*y S. ttt

/
High
2. tsoey S, « 2. ts^oeo B, "B
2.tshceoB. H 2. ji B. 5 2. sap 81. +
level
3. iAu. ftj. m 3. pou m. m 3. 4eu 13, *
4. pan ■&, (S 4. t^in 55. BB
5. t*bo m. m*

2 pairs 3 pairs 3 pairs 4 pairs

High / 1 1. siu /J\ 1. st 8. K 1.jy ft. S 1. pec fif. S

rise
2. fcEQ SI. K 2. syn m, « 2. ji tSf, 3 2. sy *,, »
3. heu Q. «g 3. soeotB*.± 3. SE 8, It
4. lei S*.W

2 pairs 1 pair 1 pair

Mid / 1 /
level 1. ts^Dl. » 1. thoutt, It 1. pak If, S
2.p>>a Jfg
4 pairs 2 pairs

Low 1. mun f"J, ?S5 1. se i£. St

fell / 1 / / 2. bra »8. 6
2. k^i flK, Ife
3. ts"b «, ®
4. hai K, ?S

1 pair
Low / 1 i / /
rise 1. lou ig, &

Low
level / 1 1 / / /

♦Tone change occurs in the three stimuli 相，架，糖 from low idling to high rising tone as follows:

a) 相 soeo21 soerj35* 'photograph'

梨 lei21 — lei35* 'pear' (changed tones are starred)
The tone change in 相 and 梨 are morphologically condidoned and the tone change carries with it some
specialized meaning • 'Eamiliaricy'.相，梨 with the changed tone are colloquial.

b) 糖 t^bo21 ラ t^bo35* 'candy'

糖undergoes tone change to give a morpheme meaning 'candy' while the original morpheme means
'sugar'

The three stimuli 相.梨，糖have undergone tone change and with the changed tone,相，梨.糖represent
stimuli having high rising tones. Tone change morphemes are usually not included in Cantonese syllabaries.

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 87

High quality colour photographs of all stimuli and distractors

produced. The four items were placed in randomised positions on the
card and the order of the test cards was also randomised.

1.3. Procedure

Each subject was tested individually. The test was not performed in
sound-treated rooms and hence there was some ambient noise during the
test. The subject was presented with two pre-test plates and the
procedure was explained. Subjects were required to point to the picture,
from a choice of four, that corresponded to a spoken stimulus word. The
stimulus word was presented orally by an experimenter (of which there
were two, both of whom were female and native speakers of Cantonese).
Stimulus words were presented 'live’ rather than by audio-taped
presentation because the experiment was designed to provide data against
which the performance of language-impaired subjects could subsequently
be compared. Language-impaired subjects notoriously respond better to
live presentation of stimuli because of a range of cognitive factors such as
difficulties with attention control.

Each subject completed the two pre-test plates. All subjects were able to
do this, indicating that they understood the experimental procedure. The
39 item main test was then administered.

2. RESULTS

2.1. Accuracy Scores

Accuracy scores were high in all three subject groups. Scores are
presented in table 4.

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88 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

Table 4. Scores across subject groups

Group Mean Score % Correct Standard

Deviation

20 - 29 years 38.13 98% 1.20

50 - 59 years 37.35 96% 2.35

60 - 69 years 33.48 85% 4.02

Maximum Score 39

The young adult group produced the highest scores (98% correct). The
50 year old group achieved only a slightly lower score (96% correct),
whilst the 60 year old group showed a more marked decrement in
performance (85% correct). Differences between groups were assessed
with Mann-Whitney "U” tests. No significant difference was found
between the young adults and the 50 • 59 year olds, but significant
differences emerged between the young adult and 60 year old groups
(young adult > 60-69 year olds at p = 0.0000) and the 50 year olds and
the oldest group (50 - 59 year olds > 60 - 69 year olds at p = 0.0003).
These findings would indicate that a possible age-effect exists，and that
this effect emerged in the 60 year old age group.
The scores of the small sub-group of older adults for whom
Cantonese was not the mother-tongue were lower than those of the group
for whom Cantonese was LI. The accuracy score of the Cantonese LI
group was 92%, whilst that of the non-Ll group was 85% correct
responses. Statistical comparisons of these differences were not however
performed due to the small number (N = 8) in the non-Cantonese as LI

group. The error pattern of this small sub-group of subjects indicated

difficulties with both tonal and segmental phonological decoding. The
60-69 year old group were sub-divided into subjects whose LI was
Cantonese and those for whom the mother tongue was not Cantonese.
The percentage of errors which were tonal or segmental for the Cantonese

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 89

as LI sub-group was 49% and 18% respectively. For the non-Cantonese

as LI subjects, tonal errors made up 59% of the error total，and segmental
errors 24%. Hence both types of phonological error were higher in the
non-Cantonese as LI subjects.

2.2. Correlational Analysis

In this study, the experimental groups differed not only in age, but
also in educational and occupational level. Correlations between these
variables and scores within the two older adult groups were assessed via
Spearman correlations. All three correlations were significant. There
was a negative correlation between age and score (-0.54, p = 0.0001), but
positive correlations between occupational level and educational level and
score. The correlation coefficient of occupational level and score was
+0.41 (p = 0.0042). The strongest correlation was observed between
educational level and test score (+0.63, p = 0.0000). These results
indicate that, with increasing age scores tend to fall and that subjects of
lower educational and occupational level tend to have lower test scores.

2.3. Error Analysis

The nature of errors produced by each subject group are presented
table 5.

Table 5. Error types across subject groups

Group Semantic Segmental Tonal No Response

20 - 29 20 (77%) 1 (4%) 4 (15%) 1 (4%)

years

50 - 59 13 (34%) 2 (6%) 23 (61%) 0

years

60 - 69 31 (24%) 26 (21%) 67 (53%) 3 (2%)

years

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90 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

Analysis of error patterns indicated very different types of error acr

the young adult group and the two older adult groups. In addition
making very few errors, the young adults made predominantly seman
errors. Semantic errors occurred across all subject groups. Very of
certain test stimuli consistently elicited semantic errors. These errors
were attributed to the semantic distractor either being too potent a
distractor or a visual confusion existing between the target item and the
distractor. For example, the item 'run' had 'jump' as a semantic
distractor. The photographs depicting each action were to a degree
visually similar. If a subject failed to scan all four picture choices, they
could select a photograph which was only a partial match to the stimulus
word and hence a semantic' error.

The errors of the older subjects showed a different pattern. In both

the 50 - 59 year olds and the 60 - 69 year olds, tonal errors were
predominant，accounting for 61% and 53% of the errors respectively. In
contrast, only 15% of the young adult errors were tonal ones. Regarding
the other error types, segmental errors occurred only rarely in the young
adult and 50 year old adult groups. Segmental errors were more evident
in the 60 year old group.

Tonal errors were of particular interest in this study. Tonal

confusions, combined across subject groups, are shown in table 6.

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE

Table 6. Pattern of responses to tonal minimal pairs

Stim high high mid low fall low low

level rise level rise level

Resp. Tone 1 Tone 4 Tone 6

Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 5

high
level 577 0 2 0 1 0

Tone 1

high
rise 1 627 0 2 1 0

Tone 2

mid

level 6 0 292 6 1 -

Tone 3

low

fall 2 22 -
546 0 11

Tone 4

low

rise 2 13 -
3 449 -

Tone 5

low

level 0 10 6 0 0 281

Tone 6

The horizontal row indicates the tone of the stimulus word and the

vertical column, the tone value of the response choice. Hence in response
to tone 1，a tone 1 response was given on 577 occasions. It was
interpreted as tone 2 on no occasions etc..
-=no instances of pair

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92 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

High error pairs were arbitrarily defined as pairs where the total num
of errors was more than five (i.e. tone a/tone b + tone b/tone a < 5). B
this criterion, seven tone pairs were defined as high error pairs. T
are listed in table 7. The height and contour characteristics of the
are also presented.

Table 7. High error tonal pairs

High Error PairsSimilarities between Error direction

j>air
Tones 1-3 similar contour bidirectional

Tones 2-4 similar starting

height unidirectional

(2-4)

Tones 2-5 similar starting

height & unidirectional

contour (2-5)

Tones 2 - 6 similar starting

height unidirectional

(2-6)

Tones 3-4 similar contour unidirectional

(4-3)

Tones 3 - 6 similar contour &

height unidirectional

(3-6)

Tones 4-6 similar contour &

height unidirectional

(6-4)

The tonal pairs, identified by Fok (1974) as being of high confusabilit

are present in the table, i.e. tone pairs 2 - 5, 3 - 6 and 4-6. These tonal

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 93

pairs are similar in height and contour. Also present in table 7 ar

which have dissimilar contours, but similar starting heights (ton
2 • 6). Also present are pairs with dissimilar height, but very
contours (tones 1 • 3, 3 - 4). A second level of analysis was perfor
examine whether the error pattern was uni- or bidirectional (i.e.
high error pair, e.g. tones 2-6, were both tones confused with ea
or was there a pattern of "strong" and ”weak” tones). In this inst
formula "tone a/tone b • tone b/tone a > + 5" was used. This indicated a

bidirectional pattern on tones 1-3, and unidirectional patterns on tones

2-4, 2-5, 2-6 (with tone 2 being identified as a "weak" tone) and
tones 3 - 4, 4 - 6 and 3-6. The latter result is not important as there
was only one instance of a 3 - 6 pair and therefore the confusion pattern
by necessity was unidirectional. No particular pattern of strong or weak
tones was identified on the 3-4 and 4-6 pairs. In 3 - 4 oairs there was
a tendency to mistake tone 4 for the higher tone 3 and on the 4-6 pairs,
tone 6 was identified as the lower tone 4.

3. DISCUSSION

This study found evidence of an age effect on a rather simple tas

namely matching a word to a picture in the presence of related
distractors. However the interpretation of this result is not
uncomplicated. The differences between older and young subject groups
might be attributed to variables other than age, specifically educational
level, socioeconomic status or language history. A general account of the
difficulties older subjects experienced with the test in terms of
unfamiliarity with a test context may perhaps be an incomplete
explanation. The error analysis indicated that older subjects made
specifically phonological errors on the test and predominantly tonal
confusions.

A second explanation, drawing on the predominance of phonological

errors, might point to specific auditory perceptual deficits in older

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94 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

subjects. The particular difficulty on tonal discrimination might reflect

difficulties in auditory perception linked to ageing. Perceptual deceit
combined with slowed information processing may both potentially affe
the discrimination of dynamic tones, with acoustically very similar
characteristics.

A further factor that needs to be considered in accounting for the

predominance of tonal errors in the elderly group, is the fundamental
nature of tone perception. Tonal information is relative information.
The actual frequencies present varies with the gender of the speaker and
factors such as the intonation pattern of the utterance. Fok (1974)
showed that for example，emphatic speech showed an increase in tone
levels when compared to more neutral speech. The paradigm used in this
study involved presenting the subject with a word in isolation. It may
well be that this presents the user of a tone language with more difficulty
in lexical processing. The stimulus word is presented without relative
tonal information, making lexical processing more difficult in isolation
than when a word is presented within some linguistic context. Special
difficulty might be experienced by older subjects in attempting to decide
on tones without the benifit of relative information, as this is essentially
a reconstructive process as opposed to a direct perceptual process.

The results of this study do have practical implications. The

evidence of difficulties in making tonal discriminations on isolated
monosyllables for older subjects suggests that phonological decoding is
particularly reliant on surrounding linguistic and extralinguistic context
in older Cantonese speakers. Such a proposal could be tested by
comparing the performance of older adults on the lexical comprehension
test as it now stands, with performance on the same test stimuli，but with

the target word placed in a sentence frame. The implications for

language pathologists assessing language performances in aphasic adults
are particularly evident. Many aphasics are older adults. Language

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AGE EFFECTS IN TONAL COMPREHENSION IN CANTONESE 95

pathologists should therefore exercise care in interpreting failures on

lexical tests and choice of tonal distractors as indicative of a language
pathology. Such a pattern of performance might be that typically found
in older adults when endeavouring to discriminate tonal contrasts.
Within the tonal error category, it was found that tones with similar
starting heights and/or contours were more confusable (Fok 1974).
Errors were rare between tonal pairs which were dissimilar in both
contour and height. Gandour (1983) claimed both height and contour
were important in the perceptual judgements of tonal contrasts, and that
height was particularly important in the tonal judgements of Cantonese
speakers. The results of this study provided no evidence for the primacy
or either height or contour information. Both factors appeared important
as the high error pairs included pairs related in contour, height or both.
There was some limited support for Li and Thompson's proposal that
rising tones (tones 2 and 5) were perceptually more difficult (Li &
Thompson 1977). Tone 2 was classified as a "weak" tone as it was

misperceived as lower tones. However there was no evidence that the

second rising tone, tone 5, was frequently misperceived. Outside the
instances of high errors on tone 2, there was little evidence for marked
and unmarked tones.

In conclusion, this study has attempted to investigate aspects of

lexical processing in Cantonese. The primary aim of the work was to
provide a basis for the development of clinical tools in a relatively under
researched language. In investigating lexical processing, confusions
between tones, related to their acoustic characteristics were identified.

However other factors were identified within the study, for example, the
issue of the validity of presenting isolated words in the assessment of
lexical abilities in older speakers of tone languages. Finally, issues
relating to the difficulty of controlling subject variables such as
educational level and language history, in a population such as that of
Hong Kong were addressed.

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96 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

♦The project was supported by the Simon Lee Research Fund.

REFERENCES

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FOK, C.Y.Y. (1974). A Perceptual Study of Tones in Cantonese. Hong
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GANDOUR, J. (1983). Tone perception in Far Eastern languages.Jowrwa/
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RUPP, R.R. (1980). Speech input processing, hearing loss and aural
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Language & Communication in the Elderly. Lexington: D.C. H

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Unpublished MPhil thesis. University of Hong Kong.

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98 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS, Vol. 23, No. 2

广东话声调理解的年龄影响
华莉莉
雪非耳大学，英国
苏周简开
香港大学，香港

三种不同年龄组的被试完成一项广州话词汇理解测
验。此测验要求被试从三个偏差项目中选出目标词汇》
测验中发现了年龄的影响。除了年龄因素外，另外三项
可能影响词汇理解能力的因素如教育程度、职业及语言
背景亦需要考虑”年龄较大的被试在分辨声调时有特別
困难。当两个声调具有相似水平、轮廓或两者兼备，声
调混淆的情况便会出现。文中讨论了年纪较的被试在分
辨单字的声调时出现困难的可能性，亦考虑了将单字放
在语言环境内对年龄较大的被试取得声调整资料的重要
性。

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