About this Research Topic
Papers on a range of areas in the development of lexical tones and pitch-accents will be considered including papers that relate to:
Influences of tone and pitch-accent variation on infant speech processing (e.g. speech discrimination, word learning, statistical learning).
Influences of bilingualism on early tone perception.
Determinants of tone perception in infancy and early childhood (e.g. acoustic salience, tone frequency, tone-intonation relationships).
Relationship between the development of pitch-based tone perception and (a) spectrally-based consonant and vowel perception, (b) perception of musical tones and melody, or (c) perception of prosody and intonation.
Properties of tone in infant-/child-directed speech insofar as they influence the acquisition of tone.
Studies of tone perception from second language learners insofar as they inform research on tone development in childhood.
Studies from early tone production that link to studies in tone perception.
Theoretical perspectives (and reformulations of existing theories) on the role of tone in speech and language development.
Keywords: lexical tone, suprasegmental phonology, pitch variation, sandhi, Mandarin Chinese
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.