While phonological theory recognizes lexical tones and intonational tones as equivalent elements in prosodic grammars, psycholinguistic and neuro-cognitive research has found behavioral and processing differences between lexical and post-lexical tones in a wide spectrum of investigations. Broadly, research results support a linguistic status of lexical tone and an ambiguous status of intonation, with perception research yielding evidence for discrete lexical tone categories, but not for intonational tones, whose status may appear to vary across experimental methods. Besides tones that make up the phonological representations of morphemes in combination with vowels and consonants and tones that signal prosodic phrase structures and discourse meanings, grammatical tones may function in the morphology and syntax. There is an evident need for a more detailed understanding of the implications of the structural and functional differences among the ways in which languages incorporate tones into their grammars.
The goal of this Research Topic is to address the crosstalk between categorical tone and gradient intonation from a wide range of perspectives, including general and applied linguistics, speech and hearing sciences, and cognitive psychology and neuroscience. We are interested in papers addressing the multifaceted function of tone (i) drawing on different theoretical frameworks, (ii) using different experimental approaches including behavioral, psychological and neuroscientific paradigms, (iii) studying various populations ranging from monolinguals, bilinguals, young and older subjects to healthy and pathological individuals, (iv) employing typologically distinct languages, and (v) adopting linguistically diverse contexts as in first and second language acquisition. The overall aim is to give a comprehensive theoretical and experimental overview of tonal functions and to uncover the link between linguistic structures and linguistic functions. As such, the present Research Topic will provide us with valuable cues on the human disposition for linguistic and paralinguistic communication, give us completely new insights into how linguistic expressivity is built, and establish new directions for future research.
We are inviting authors to submit articles to this Research Topic, addressing but not limited to the following themes: differences between lexical and post-lexical tones; separate and simultaneous processing of lexical and intonational tones; interplay and integration of different tonal functions in spoken communication; cross-linguistic comparisons of tone processing; development and acquisition of discrete and scalar nature of tones; influences of language specific default interpretations of tone in language processing and acquisition; cross-linguistic transfer of tonal patterns; acoustic and perceptual evaluation of different tonal functions; overlap and disassociation of sensory and cognitive processes involved in lexical tone and intonation processing; neural organization of tonal functions from subcortical to cortical structures as well as their hemispheric lateralization; tonal processing from a pathological standpoint. We welcome different article types, including Original Research, Review, Meta-Analysis, Methodology, Conceptual Analysis, and Hypothesis and Theory, for submission.
While phonological theory recognizes lexical tones and intonational tones as equivalent elements in prosodic grammars, psycholinguistic and neuro-cognitive research has found behavioral and processing differences between lexical and post-lexical tones in a wide spectrum of investigations. Broadly, research results support a linguistic status of lexical tone and an ambiguous status of intonation, with perception research yielding evidence for discrete lexical tone categories, but not for intonational tones, whose status may appear to vary across experimental methods. Besides tones that make up the phonological representations of morphemes in combination with vowels and consonants and tones that signal prosodic phrase structures and discourse meanings, grammatical tones may function in the morphology and syntax. There is an evident need for a more detailed understanding of the implications of the structural and functional differences among the ways in which languages incorporate tones into their grammars.
The goal of this Research Topic is to address the crosstalk between categorical tone and gradient intonation from a wide range of perspectives, including general and applied linguistics, speech and hearing sciences, and cognitive psychology and neuroscience. We are interested in papers addressing the multifaceted function of tone (i) drawing on different theoretical frameworks, (ii) using different experimental approaches including behavioral, psychological and neuroscientific paradigms, (iii) studying various populations ranging from monolinguals, bilinguals, young and older subjects to healthy and pathological individuals, (iv) employing typologically distinct languages, and (v) adopting linguistically diverse contexts as in first and second language acquisition. The overall aim is to give a comprehensive theoretical and experimental overview of tonal functions and to uncover the link between linguistic structures and linguistic functions. As such, the present Research Topic will provide us with valuable cues on the human disposition for linguistic and paralinguistic communication, give us completely new insights into how linguistic expressivity is built, and establish new directions for future research.
We are inviting authors to submit articles to this Research Topic, addressing but not limited to the following themes: differences between lexical and post-lexical tones; separate and simultaneous processing of lexical and intonational tones; interplay and integration of different tonal functions in spoken communication; cross-linguistic comparisons of tone processing; development and acquisition of discrete and scalar nature of tones; influences of language specific default interpretations of tone in language processing and acquisition; cross-linguistic transfer of tonal patterns; acoustic and perceptual evaluation of different tonal functions; overlap and disassociation of sensory and cognitive processes involved in lexical tone and intonation processing; neural organization of tonal functions from subcortical to cortical structures as well as their hemispheric lateralization; tonal processing from a pathological standpoint. We welcome different article types, including Original Research, Review, Meta-Analysis, Methodology, Conceptual Analysis, and Hypothesis and Theory, for submission.
