Age effect in tonal comprehension in Cantonese

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.

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别困难. 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. 文中讨论了年纪较大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.