I am primarily concerned with the processing and production of Lexical tones in Shona Aphasic and Healthy speakers. I am also interested in the mechanisms behind speech production and perception in native and non-native speakers, with a main focus on acoustic analyses and what these demonstrate about the way we produce and perceive speech. My other interests also include the organization of language in Shona-English Bilinguals and Verb processing in agrammatic aphasia.

Contact
McLoddy R. Kadyamusuma
Institut für Linguistik
Universität Potsdam
Graduate school of Clinical Linguistics
D-14476 Potsdam
Telephone: +49 331 977 2841 office
E-Mail kadyamus[at]rz.uni-potsdam.de


Thesis

Period December 2007-December 2010.
It is estimated that 70 % of the world´s languages are tonal languages (Yip, 2002). Lexical Tonal production and perception has been shown to be impaired in Left Hemisphere (LH) brain damaged patients in Thai, Mandarin Chinese and Norwegian (Gandour et al, 1992, Naesar & Chan, 1980 and Moen & Sundet, 1996). Much of what we know up to the present moment on tonal language impairments in brain damaged patients and healthy speakers in processing, perception and production has largely been as a result of extensive research in Asian tone languages. However, not much is known although it is assumed that the same patterns will emerge also for African tonal languages.
The present study focuses on Shona a Bantu language spoken mainly in Zimbabwe by about 10 million speakers. Shona unlike Chinese and Thai only has two tones High and Low (H & L). However, since the language does not allow monosyllabic words like in Chinese and Thai, the tones combine to form lexical contrast groups.
Dichotic listening studies have shown that native speakers of tonal languages demonstrate a Right Ear Advantage (REA) signaling Left Hemisphere lateralization. This project seeks to find out if the scale of hemispheric laterization as proposed by Van Lancker (1980) is also valid for Shona. Van Lancker proposed that hemispheric specialization is associated with different domains of pitch contrast with lexical tone being the "most linguistically structured" and affect and voice quality being the least linguistically structured.” Van Lancker´s Functional account posits that when pitch contrasts are more linguistic, they are they are laterized to the left hemisphere; and when they are less linguistic, they are laterized to the right.
This study predicts that if Shona tonal phonemes are laterized to the left hemisphere since they serve a linguistic role just like consonantal phonemes, a unilateral damage to the left hemisphere is also likely to result in deficits in production and perception of lexical tones in Shona speakers. It is the intent of the current research to unearth the patterns in Shona LH and RH damaged patients. It is also the researchers aim to find the laterization of tones in Shona healthy speakers and also brain damaged patients. Some of the basic questions that this project seeks to answer are:

• Where are tones laterized in Shona speakers?
• Does an insult in the LH result in deficits in
  • The processing,
  • Perception and/or production of tones?

In the later stages of this project non native speakers will also be tested to see if they can process the same tones with a native like ability. My prediction though is that speakers of non-tonal languages will perceive these tones as non-linguistic and psychophysical phenomena. While on the other hand the native speakers perceive this as linguistic and hence processing it in the Left Hemisphere.

References

Gandour, J., Ponglorpisit, S., Khunadorn, F., Dechongkit, S., Boongird, P., Boonklam, R., and Potisuk, S., (1992).Lexcial tones in Thai after unilateral brain damage. Brain and Language, 43, 275-307.

Mattock, K. & Burnham, D. (2006). Chinese and English Infants’ tone perception: Evidence for perceptual reorganization. Infancy, 10 (3), 241-265.

Moen, I., & Sundet, K., (1996). Production and perception of word tones (pitch accents) in patients with left and right hemisphere damage. Brain and Language 53, 267-281.

Naesar, M. A & Chan, W. C., (1980). Case study of a Chinese aphasic with the Boston Diagnostic Aphasic Exam.Neuropsychologia, 18, 389-410.

Sidtis, J. J., & Van Lancker-Sidtis, D. (2003). A Neurobehavioral approach to  dysprosody. Seminars in Speech andLanguage, 24 (2), 93-105.

Van Lanker, D., & Fromkin, V. A., (1973). Hemispheric specialization for pitch and ‘tone’: Evidence from Thai. Journal of Phonetics, 1, 101-109 

CV

Education
12/2007 - 2010 PhD Research Student, Potsdam Universität

Project: The effect of brain damage and linguistic experience on Shona lexical tone processing.

09/2006 - 11/2007 Msc in Clinical Linguistics, European Masters' in Clinical Linguistics.

Milano-Biccoca University, Italy,

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands

& University of Potsdam, Germany.

Msc. Thesis: Sentence Production with verbs of alternating transitivity in Shona Agrammatic speakers.

07/2005 - 08/2006      Language Tutor

2002 - 2005     BA Honors in Linguistics University of Zimbabwe.

B.A Thesis: Strategies used in the rehabilitation of Speech and Language impairments. A case study: St Giles Medical

Rehabilitation Centre, Harare.

Languages
Mother Tongue:    Shona

Other Languages: English: native written and spoken,

German: spoken

French: basic

List of Publications

Kadyamusuma, McLoddy R. , De Bleser, Ria and Mayer, Joerg (2011) 'Perceptual discrimination of Shona lexical tones & low-pass filtered speech by left and right hemisphere damaged patients', Aphasiology, 25: 5, 576 -592. URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02687038.2010.540336.

Kadyamusuma, M. R., De Bleser, R., & Mayer, J. (accepted) in press. Lexical tone disruption in Shona after brain damage. Journal of Aphasiology.

Kadyamusuma, M. R., De Bleser, R., & Mayer, J. (submitted). Linguistic experience as influencing the perception of lexical tone and hums by native speakers of Shona, German and Thai. Language & Speech. 

Kadyamusuma, M. R., De Bleser, R., & Mayer, J. (2009). Production and Perception of Shona Lexical tones in Left and Right hemisphere damaged patients. Proceedings of the II Clinical Linguistics conference pg, 474-480.

Kadyamusuma, M.R., & Acrey, N. (2009). The role of saliency in Chishona agrammatic sentence production.Proceedings of the First Nordic clinical linguistics conference.Joensu, Finland.

Conference & Poster Presentations

Kadyamusuma, M. R., De Bleser, R., & Mayer, J. (2010). The effect of Linguistic experience on non-native lexical tone and pitch perception by native speakers of Shona, German and Thai. Poster, Potsdam Graduate School Doktorandensymposium.

Kadyamusuma, M.R., De Bleser, R., Joerg Mayer & Shravan Vasishth (2009) Perceptual discrimination of Shona lexical tones and hums by Left and Right hemisphere damaged patients. SOA talk, Antalya Turkey.

Kadyamusuma, M.R., De Bleser, R., Mayer, J., & Vasishth, S., (2009) Perceptual discrimination of Shona lexicaltones and hums by left and right hemisphere damaged patients. Academy of aphasia. Poster, Boston.

Kadyamusuma, M.R., De Bleser, R., Mayer, J., & Vasishth, S., (2009) Production and Perception of Shona lexical tones in Left and Right hemipshere damaged patients. Proceedings of the Second Clinical linguistics conference, Poster. Madrid, Spain.

Kadyamusuma, M.R., & Acrey, N.(2009). The role of Saliency in Chishona agrammatic sentence production. Proceedings of the First Nodic Conference of Clinical Linguistics Joensuu. (Presentation).

Kadyamusuma, M. R., & De Bleser, R. (2009). Adaptation of the Bilingual Aphasia test (BAT) English-Shona. International Symposium on Bilingual 7, poster presentation, 8-11 July 2009 Utrecht, Netherlands.

Kadyamusuma, M.R., Mayer, J., & De Bleser , R. (2008). Tone perception and production Impairment in Shona. Presentation given at the International Workshop on cross linguistic aspects of Aphasia. Potsdam, Germany.