Perception of linguistic pitch in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers

Abstract

This study investigated the perception of linguistic pitch in Cantonese-English bilingual speakers. Two age groups of bilingual speakers (age 10-13 and age 20-23) were recruited and attended the experiment which included three sessions: Cantonese lexical tone perception test, English lexical stress perception test, the mixed mode test of lexical tone and lexical stress. The stimuli were fifty-five CVCV non-words with fifteen different tone contrasts in lexical tone test, and with initial stressed or final stressed in lexical stress test. The results showed that adults performed significantly better than the children in both lexical tone and lexical stress perception. Children had similar performance in tone and stress perception but adults performed better in stress perception than tone perception. The tone contrasts of mid level-low level, and high rising-low rising were the most difficult to discriminate for both children and adults. Findings suggest that bilingual speakers used the same perception strategy in perceiving linguistic pitch of lexical stress and lexical tone and the language experience still affected and improved the suprasegmental acquisition after age of 10-13.