Lexical access in Chinese speech comprehension and production.

This paper offers a description of Chinese speech comprehension and production processes that demonstrates why the word is the unit of lexical access-the Lexical Unit-in Chinese natural speech. It is argued that an access model which posits the morpheme as the Lexical Unit would be unlikely, as it must assume for Chinese either a real-time morpheme combination algorithm (i.e., an on-line grammar that takes morphemes as basic combinatory units) or an improbable lexical processing mechanism in which morphemes are identified as the first step in accessing precompiled words.

Tone production deficits in nonfluent aphasic Chinese speech.

Previous studies demonstrating a right hemisphere lateralization of musical, tonal, and intonational stimuli had suggested that in aphasic tone language speakers, the tonal phonemes might be subject to a lesser degree of deficit than consonantal phonemes. Using a word repetition task, this research demonstrates that left-damaged nonfluent aphasic speakers of Chinese experience a tonal production deficit which is both quantitatively and qualitatively equivalent to the deficit experienced by these speakers in the production of consonants. It is suggested that in tone languages, lexical specification of tone contour information results in left hemisphere lateralization of that information, thus making the tonal phonemes vulnerable to left hemisphere damage.