Effects of Tone Merging and Musical Training on Cantonese Tone Perception

This study investigates whether musical training can facilitate lexical tone perception of native speakers of a tone language. Some Cantonese tone pairs, T2/T5 (rising), T3/T6 (level), T4/T6 (falling vs level) are merging in recent years. The merging subjects have poorer general tone perception than the control subjects. Previous studies showed that musical training facilitates lexical tone perception of non-tone language speakers. However, it is unclear if musical training can also influence tone perception of native speakers of tone-languages who are merging tones. Three groups of listeners (normal Cantonese, merging Cantonese, foreign) with and without advanced musical training participated in AX discrimination tasks of Cantonese tones and pure tones. Both accuracy and reaction time data show that while musical training can enhance lexical tone perception of foreign listeners, it has little influence on merging Cantonese listeners. The results indicate that different perceptual mechanisms may be involved in linguistic and musical tone perception, and that the linguistic use of tones is more fundamental and more robust than musical training.