This dissertation investigates the production and perception of Shona lexical tone at the disyllabic level. The focus is two fold; i) the effect of brain lesions on the production and perception of lexical tone, ii) the influence of linguistic experience with pitch contrasts on the ability to perceive Shona lexical tone with an emphasis on the strategies used to distinguish lexical tones. The dissertation evaluates the currently available hypotheses on the lateralization of lexical tone (Van Lancker, 1980; Van Lancker & Sidtis, 1992) to account for the patterns seen in Shona brain damaged...