The brain localization debate of lexical tone processing concerns functional hypothesis that lexical tone, owing to its strong linguistic features, is dominant in the left hemisphere, and acoustic hypothesis that all pitch patterns, including lexical tone, are dominant in the right hemisphere due to their acoustic features. Lexical tone as a complex signal contains acoustic components that carry linguistic, paralinguistic, and nonlinguistic information. To examine these two hypotheses, the current study adopted triplet stimuli including Chinese characters, their corresponding pinyin with a diacritic, and the four diacritics representing Chinese lexical tones. The stimuli represent the variation of lexical tone for its linguistic and acoustic features. The results of a listening task by Mandarin Chinese speakers with and without aphasia support the functional hypothesis that pitch patterns are lateralized to different hemispheres of the brain depending on their functions, with lexical tone to the left hemisphere as a function of linguistic features.

中文翻译：

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失语汉语普通话者的语调感知

关于词汇语调处理的大脑定位辩论涉及功能假设，即词汇语调由于其强大的语言特征而在左半球占主导地位，而声学假说则认为所有音高模式（包括词汇语调在内）都在右半球占主导地位。声学特征。作为复杂信号的词汇声调包含携带语言，副语言和非语言信息的声学成分。为了检验这两个假设，当前的研究采用了三重音刺激，包括汉字，它们对应的带有音素符号的拼音以及代表汉语词汇声调的四个音素符号。刺激代表了其语言和声学特征的词汇语调变化。