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Effect of Semantic Context on the Perceptual Learning of Lexical Tone

Previous research has not determined whether the inclusion of lexical semantic information facilitates or inhibits the learning of second language (L2) phonetic contrasts. The present study addresses this issue by comparing the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones with and without semantic contexts. Two groups of native English listeners with no lexical tone experience participated in a Mandarin tone training program where one (“No meaning”) group received training with only phonetic tonal contrasts, while the other (“Meaning”) group was additionally provided with semantic information. Results show that although both groups started comparably and improved significantly with training, the “No-meaning” trainees had significantly higher tone identification accuracy rates than the “Meaning” trainees after training. However, the inter-session tests with the training stimuli reveal the opposite pattern, where the Meaning group outperformed the No-meaning group. Together, these results indicate that, at the initial stage of tone learning, non-native listeners learn more efficiently by focusing on phonetic tonal distinctions, whereas remembering the meanings of tone words does not generalize well to tone category identification.