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This dissertation, "The Enigma of Cantonese Tones: How Intonation Language Speakers Can Be Assisted to Discern Them" by Wing-wah, Ki,, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled "The Enigma of Cantonese Tones: How intonation language speakers can be assisted to discern them" Submitted by KI, Wing-wah for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in June 2007 This study investigates how non-tonal language speakers can be assisted to learn the tones of Cantonese. The study adopts a phenomenographic perspective and its variation theory of learning as the framework, and carries out a number of training experiments. The results support the hypothesis that the relevance structure of learning is critical to the way learners experience the dimensions of variation in the learning. Although non-tonal language speakers can be equally well equipped to sense pitch patterns in speech sounds, they typically 'see' such patterns as something belonging to the sentence rather than the syllables. Pitch patterns and segmental patterns are also seen to be separate from each other, each pointing towards a different kind of meaning. However, when they come to learn Cantonese, these features have to be perceived in a structurally different way. In Cantonese, almost every syllable is a word or morpheme, and the pitch/tone pattern on each syllable forms an integral part of that syllable as much as its segmental pattern is. Changing either the segmental or the pitch/tone pattern of the syllable will practically change the word or morpheme, and both patt