We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Introduction
Speech prosody refers to melodic or suprasegmental features of an utterance (e.g. pitch) that may signal a variety of linguistic and paralinguistic functions (Lehiste, 1996). Over the last quarter century, increasing attention has been focused on the roles of the left (LH) and right (RH) cerebral hemispheres in the processing of prosodic information. Evidence has been steadily accumulating in the dichotic listening (Shipley-Brown et al., 1988), lesion deficit (Baum & Pell, 1999) and brain imaging (Meyer, Alter & Friederici, 2003; Plante, Creusere & Sabin, 2002) literature implicating the RH in the perception of prosodic units assigned to phrase- and sentence-level structures. Dichotic listening (Wang, Jongman & Sereno, 2001) and lesion deficit (Gandour, 1998a, b; Wong, 2002) data from tone languages point to LH and RH lateralization, respectively, for tonal and affective information. This chapter presents an overview of research findings from positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on the perception of Chinese speech prosody (see Buckner & Logan, 2001; Rugg, 1999, for tutorials on hemodynamic methods of brain imaging).
Background and significance
The underlying basis for hemispheric asymmetry of speech perception is controversial (see Ivry & Robertson, 1998; Poeppel, 2003; Zatorre & Belin, 2001; Zatorre, Belin & Penhune, 2002, for recent reviews). One view is that the LH is specialized for speech as opposed to other complex auditory signals.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
