This finding demonstrates early cortical effects of learning a second language that involve recruitment of cortical regions implicated in tonal processing. Using a tone identification task, the right IFG was found to be activated in English learners of Mandarin tone only after training ( Wang, Sereno, Jongman, & Hirsch, 2003). Their increased activation is presumably due to their lack of experience with Chinese tones. This area has been implicated in pitch perception ( Zatorre et al., 2002). Tones induce greater activation in the right posterior middle frontal gyrus (MFG) for English speakers when compared with consonants or rimes (9: Gandour et al., 2003). The question is whether hemispheric specialization for tone can be dissociated from segments. It is well-known that hemispheric specialization may be driven by differences in acoustic features associated with segments.

These findings together support a functional dissociation of tonal and segmental information. In a left brain-damaged Chinese aphasic, vowels were spared and tones were severely impaired (11: Liang & van Heuven, 2004). In a spoken word recognition paradigm, tones elicited larger late positive event-related potential (ERP) component than vowels (19: Hu, Gao, Ma, & Yao, 2012). This separation of tone from its carrier syllable was also reported in an auditory verbal recognition paradigm in which subjects selectively attended to either the syllable or the tone (10: Li et al., 2003). Their findings were replicated in Mandarin, but syllable violations elicited an earlier and stronger N400 than tone (17: Malins & Joanisse, 2012 cf. The time course and amplitude of N400 (a negative component associated with lexical semantic processing that peaks approximately 400В ms after the auditory stimulus) were the same for consonant, rime, and tone violations in Cantonese (12: Schirmer, Tang, Penney, Gunter, & Chen, 2005). Tones are suprasegmental they are mapped onto (morpho)syllables.Дepending on task demands, tones elicit effects that differ from those of segments. Rimes and tones, however, overlap substantially in the order in which their information unfolds in time.

They differ in their duration and the order in which their information unfolds in time over the duration of a syllable. Linguistic theory informs us that the onset and rime of a syllable contain segmental units. Gandour, Ananthanarayan Krishnan, in Neurobiology of Language, 2016 87.4 Tonal Versus Segmental Units Chomsky believed that the only humans were born with the LAD and believed that language was species specific and unique to humans. Environment only serves to activate the maturation of the LAD. According to Chomsky, the LAD is a specialized language processor that contains universal underlying linguistic principles that provide children with the innate knowledge to speak and learn language. Chomsky argues that these similarities are due to the presence of an innate language-acquisition mechanism housed in the brain called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).

Across many different cultures, there are a number of linguistic developmental similarities. Unlike Behavioral Theory, Linguistic Theory argues that language acquisition is governed by universal, underlying grammatical rules that are common to all typically developing humans. Linguistic Theory was formed by Noam Chomsky who described language as having a grammar that is largely independent of language use. Sevcik, in Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology, 2017 Linguistic Theory

Linguist chomsky