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The perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native Japanese adult listeners with and without Mandarin learning experience
Abstract
Processing lexical tones is known to be difficult for non-native speakers from various language backgrounds. Perceptual accuracy of six Mandarin tone contrasts (T1–T2, T1–T3, T1–T4, T2–T3, T2–T4, T3–T4) of two groups of Japanese listeners (learners and non-learners) and a control group of Mandarin listeners were compared in Mandarin learning experience, phonetic context, and speaker gender. Both Japanese groups perceived T2–T3 poorly, but the learner group was significantly better than the non-learner group for this and the T1–T2 contrasts. The learners’ advantage was observed across various phonetic contexts (initial consonants and tone bearing vowels), suggesting that their tone perception was more stable and resistant to speaker variation. In regard to speaker gender, both Japanese groups perceived the T2–T3 contrast more poorly, and T1–T2 and T1–T4 contrasts more successfully, when produced by female speakers.
... It is possible, however, that prior experience with lexical pitch, or L1 phonetic characteristics in general, may have a negative influence on learning the pronunciation of nonnative languages depending on how the new and existing sound systems are related to each other. In the case of Japanese and Mandarin sound systems with respect to F 0 variations, it should be noted that pitch accents in Japanese phonetically differ from lexical tones in Mandarin (e.g., Caldwell-Harris et al., 2015;Shibatani, 1990;Sunaoka et al., 2009;Tsukada et al., 2016). Specifically, Japanese pitch accent is defined across multiple syllables and is not realized within a single syllable, whereas in Mandarin, each syllable is a tone bearer (e.g., Shibatani, 1990;So & Best, 2010;Wu et al., 2012). ...
... While many studies (including our own) have repeatedly shown that T2 and T3 are frequently confused in perception and/or production due to their phonetic similarity (e.g., Hallé et al., 2004;Huang & Johnson, 2010;Kiriloff, 1969;Lee et al., 1996;Shen & Lin, 1991;So & Best, 2010;Tsukada & Han, 2019;Wang et al., 1999;Wong, 2013;Wong et al., 2005 among many others), it is not the case that all other tone pairs are equally problematic to nonnative speakers from diverse L1 backgrounds, both tonal and nontonal (e.g., So & Best, 2010;Tsukada, 2019;Tsukada & Kondo, 2019;Tsukada et al., 2015). For instance, while both T2-T4 and T3-T4 were discriminated equally accurately by L1 Japanese speakers even without Mandarin experience (Tsukada et al., 2016), T2-T4 (but not T3-T4) was poorly discriminated by L1 English speakers if they lacked experience with Mandarin (Tsukada et al., 2015;Tsukada & Idemaru, 2019). This suggests that the observed cross-linguistic differences in Mandarin tone processing derive from the participants' respective L1 phonetic systems. ...
... Each L1 group consisted of participants with or without Mandarin learning experience. Some participants' results were reported in our previous studies (e.g., Tsukada, 2019;Tsukada et al., 2015Tsukada et al., , 2016Tsukada & Idemaru, 2019). All participants were university students and participated in the study in their country of residence (i.e., Australia or the United States of America for the English speakers, Australia or Japan for the Japanese speakers). ...
Purpose
This research compared individuals from two first language (L1) backgrounds (English and Japanese) to determine how they may differ in their perception of Mandarin tones (Tones 1 vs. 2 [T1–T2], Tones 1 vs. 3 [T1–T3], Tones 1 vs. 4 [T1–T4], Tones 2 vs. 3 [T2–T3], Tones 2 vs. 4 [T2–T4], Tones 3 vs. 4 [T3–T4]) on account of their L1.
Method
The participants included two groups of learners of Mandarin (23 English speakers, 18 Japanese speakers), two groups of nonlearners of Mandarin (24 English speakers, 21 Japanese speakers), and a control group of 10 Mandarin speakers. A four-alternative forced-choice discrimination task that included 360 trials was presented in three blocks of 120 trials.
Results
The native Mandarin group was more accurate in their tonal discrimination of all six tone pairs than all the nonnative groups. While Japanese nonlearners generally outperformed English nonlearners in their overall perception of Mandarin lexical tones, L1-based differences were less extensive for the two groups of learners. Both learner groups were least accurate on T2–T3 and most accurate on T3–T4.
Conclusion
The results suggest that with classroom experience, English speakers can overcome their initial disadvantage and learn lexical tones in a new language as successfully as speakers of Japanese with classroom experience.
... However, as reviewed in [18], pitch accents in Japanese phonetically differ from lexical tones in Mandarin [14]. Specifically, Japanese pitch accent is not realized within a single syllable whereas each syllable is a tone bearer in Mandarin [12]. ...
... The experimental stimuli and procedures were identical to those used in previous research [15][16][17][18]. Eight (4 males, 4 females) native Mandarin speakers with a mean age of 27.8 years (sd = 9.2) were recruited from the undergraduate student population at a university in Sydney. ...
... Each L1 group consisted of participants with and without Mandarin learning experience. The results of Japanese participants were reported in our previous study [18]. All participants were university students and participated in the study in their home countries or in Australia. ...
Mandarin is one of the most representative tonal languages with four contrastive tone categories (Tone 1 (T1): high level (ā), Tone 2 (T2): high rising (á), Tone 3 (T3): dipping (ǎ), Tone 4 (T4): high falling (à)). Learning Mandarin tones is known to be difficult for speakers from diverse first language (L1) backgrounds. We examined how individuals differing in L1 (English, Japanese) and experience with Mandarin (learners, non-learners) might respond to six pairs of Mandarin tones using a four-alternative forced-choice discrimination test. The results showed that while Japanese non-learners generally outperformed English non-learners, possibly benefitting from contrastive use of pitch accent in L1, two groups of learners did not differ in their perception of Mandarin lexical tones. This suggests that English speakers can overcome the initial disadvantage and learn lexical tones in a new language as successfully as speakers of other Asian language.
... Two groups consisted of native speakers of Thai and Vietnamese, both of which use lexical tones. The third group consisted of native speakers of Australian English who participated in our previous research (Tsukada et al. 2015(Tsukada et al. , 2016Tsukada & Kondo in press). This comparison was intended to provide an insight into whether non-native listeners from tonal language backgrounds are facilitated or inhibited by their L1 tone knowledge in the processing of Mandarin lexical tones in comparison with non-native listeners from non-tonal language backgrounds. ...
... In our previous research (Tsukada et al. 2015(Tsukada et al. , 2016 Tsukada & Kondo in press), we reported that Australian English listeners discriminated T3-T4 and T1-T3 more accurately than other tone pairs. Somewhat unexpectedly, T2-T4 (rising vs falling) confusion was observed in addition to low discriminability for T1-T2, T1-T4 and T2-T3. ...
... The experimental stimuli and procedures were identical to those used in previous research (Tsukada et al. 2015(Tsukada et al. , 2016Tsukada & Han in press;Tsukada & Kondo in press). Eight (four males, four females, mean = 27.8 years, sd = 9.2) native Mandarin speakers were recruited from the undergraduate student population at Macquarie University in Sydney. ...
Mandarin is one of the most representative tonal languages in the world with four tone categories (Tone 1 (T1): high level (ā); Tone 2 (T2): high rising (á); Tone 3 (T3): dipping
(ǎ); Tone 4 (T4): high falling (à)). Learning Mandarin tones is known to be difficult for speakers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The perception of Mandarin tones by naïve, non-native listeners from two tonal languages with a larger tone inventory than Mandarin—Thai and Vietnamese—was examined. The listeners’ discrimination accuracy of six tone pairs (T1–T2, T1–T3, T1–T4, T2–T3, T2–T4, T3–T4) was assessed and compared to that of native speakers of Mandarin on the one hand and Australian English on the other hand. The Thai and Vietnamese groups were clearly less accurate than the Mandarin group and showed a different pattern of results from each other. The Australian English group was less accurate than the Thai group only for T2–T4 and did not differ from the Vietnamese group for any of the pairs. Taken together, these findings suggest that first language tone knowledge may not necessarily be facilitative and that lack of experience with lexical tones may not disadvantage listeners from non-tonal language backgrounds in processing unfamiliar tones.
... Their tone discrimination accuracy was compared with that of 10 native Mandarin listeners and 10 Australian English listeners. The results of these two control groups of listeners from native and non-native backgrounds were presented in our previous research (Tsukada & Han, in press;Tsukada, Kondo, & Sunaoka, 2016;Tsukada, Xu, & Xu Rattanasone, 2015). ...
... Most previous research on the processing of Mandarin lexical tones involved speakers of other tonal languages (e.g., Cantonese: Gandour, 1983;Lee, Vakoch, & Wurm, 1996;So & Best, 2010;Hmong: Wang, 2013;Thai: Li, 2016;Wu, Munro, & Wang, 2014;Vietnamese: Li et al., 2017) or non-tonal European languages (e.g., Dutch: Leather, 1987;English: Hao, 2012, 2018Lee et al., 1996;Pelzl, Lau, Guo, & DeKeyser, in press;Shen & Froud, 2016;So & Best, 2010;Wang, Spence, Jongman, & Sereno, 1999;Wang, 2013;French: Hallé et al., 2004;German: Ding, Hoffmann, & Jokisch, 2011;Peng et al., 2010;Swedish: Gao, 2016). There have been a few exceptions (So & Best, 2010;Tsukada et al., 2016;Wang, 2013 for Japanese;Tsukada & Han, in press;Zhang, 2016 for Korean), but, to our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically assess Burmese listeners' crosslinguistic perception of Mandarin tones. In the study, Burmese listeners' perception accuracy was compared with that of native Mandarin listeners and Australian English listeners. ...
... In the study, Burmese listeners' perception accuracy was compared with that of native Mandarin listeners and Australian English listeners. These two groups were included to serve as controls and their results were reported previously (Tsukada et al., 2015(Tsukada et al., , 2016Tsukada & Han, in press). In this study, we focused on the Burmese group with a view to adding to our current understanding of the manner in which suprasegmental features such as lexical tones are processed, by conducting an empirical cross-linguistic study on the perception of nonnative tones. ...
This study examines the perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native speakers of Burmese who use lexical tones in their first language (L1) but are naïve to Mandarin. Unlike Mandarin tones, which are primarily cued by pitch, Burmese tones are cued by phonation type as well as pitch. The question of interest is whether Burmese listeners can utilize their L1 experience in processing unfamiliar Mandarin tones. Burmese listeners' discrimination accuracy was compared with that of Mandarin listeners and Australian English listeners. The Australian English group was included as a control group with a non-tonal background. Accuracy of perception of six tone pairs (T1-T2, T1-T3, T1-T4, T2-T3, T2-T4, T3-T4) was assessed in a discrimination test. Our main findings are 1) Mandarin listeners were more accurate than non-native listeners in discriminating all tone pairs, 2) Australian English listeners naïve to Mandarin were more accurate than similarly naïve Burmese listeners in discriminating all tone pairs except for T2-T4, and 3) Burmese listeners had the greatest trouble discriminating T2-T3 and T1-T2. Taken together, the results suggest that merely possessing lexical tones in L1 may not necessarily facilitate the perception of non-native tones, and that the active use of phonation type in encoding L1 tones may have played a role in Burmese listeners' less than optimal perception of Mandarin tones.
... A group of ten (8 females, 2 males, mean = 25.4 years, sd = 4.3) college-educated native Mandarin speakers participated as controls in our previous research [10,11,12]. None of them participated in the recording sessions. ...
... T2-T3 was the hardest pair for the Mongolian bilinguals (0.72). T2-T3 confusion has been frequently reported in the literature for listeners from diverse L1 backgrounds [1,2,8,9,10,11,12,21,22,23] and even for advanced learners [12,22]. This may be due to acoustic-phonetic similarity of T2 and T3, as both tones have an initial dip in pitch followed by a rising pitch contour when spoken in isolation. ...
... The Mongolian bilinguals' discrimination accuracy for T2-T3 was significantly lower than that for the other five tone pairs. T2 and T3 have been frequently reported to be phonetically similar and difficult for listeners from diverse L1 backgrounds to differentiate [1,2,8,9,10,11,12,21,22,23]. It would be useful to conduct a categorization task 3 to characterize how Mongolian bilinguals identify Mandarin tones, in particular, T2 and T3. ...
Mandarin is a representative tonal language with four
contrastive tone categories (Tone 1 (T1): high level (ā), Tone 2
(T2): high rising (á), Tone 3 (T3): dipping (ǎ), Tone 4 (T4): high
falling (à)). Learning Mandarin tones is known to be difficult
for speakers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The purpose
of this research was to examine how native Mongolianspeaking
bilinguals perceive Mandarin lexical tones. The 24 (17
females, 7 males) participants studied Mandarin for 15 years on
average in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China. A
discrimination experiment was conducted to assess Mongolian
bilinguals’ perception of six tone pairs (T1-T2, T1-T3, T1-T4,
T2-T3, T2-T4, T3-T4). The Mongolian group was less accurate
than the control group of ten native Mandarin listeners for all
six pairs and the between-group difference was particularly
large for T2-T3. However, large individual variation was
observed and some Mongolian bilinguals perceived Mandarin
tones as accurately as native Mandarin listeners, suggesting that
native-like tone perception is attainable in subsequently
acquired languages.
... Piske et al., 2001;Stölten et al., 2013). Nevertheless, a positive effect of L2 learning experience in adulthood has been reported for the processing of Mandarin tones (Hao, 2012(Hao, , 2018Shen and Froud, 2016;Tsukada et al., 2015Tsukada et al., , 2016. For example, advanced learners of Mandarin who speak American English as their first language (L1) have been shown to perceive lexical tones in a native-like categorical way (Shen and Froud, 2016), indicating that it is possible to achieve native-like performance in adulthood. ...
... In our previous research (Tsukada et al., 2015(Tsukada et al., , 2016Tsukada and Kondo, under review), we observed relatively high discrimination accuracy for T3-T4 by naïve listeners from diverse L1 backgrounds, both tonal (Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese) and non-tonal (Australian English). The accurate T3-T4 discrimination was attributed to multiple acoustic cues supporting this contrast including durational differences (short for T4 and long for T3) and creaky voice associated with T3 (e.g. ...
... The listeners' tone discrimination accuracy was assessed in a discrimination test with a four-alternative forced-choice oddity task used in previous research (e.g. Flege, 2003;Flege et al., 1999;Tsukada et al., 2005Tsukada et al., , 2015Tsukada et al., , 2016Wayland andGuion, 2003, 2004). Because this task does not require lexical access, it is suitable for examining phonetic processes used in cross-language speech perception by participants who have no prior experience with the target language. ...
While it is well established that non-native speakers differ from native speakers in their perception and/or production of Mandarin lexical tones, empirical studies focusing on non-native learners are still limited. The objective of this study is to add to the current understanding of lexical tone perception by comparing native speakers of standard Korean from the Seoul/Kyunggi area differing in Mandarin experience (NK1, NK2) with native speakers of Mandarin. NK1 (n = 10) had no experience with Mandarin whereas NK2 (n = 10) consisted of highly advanced learners of Mandarin. A group of 10 native Mandarin (NM) speakers was included as controls. Accuracy of perception of six tone pairs (T1–T2, T1–T3, T1–T4, T2–T3, T2–T4, T3–T4) was assessed in a four-alternative forced-choice discrimination test. As expected, the NK2 group with extensive Mandarin learning experience resembled the NM group to a greater extent than did the NK1 group. T2–T3 was the hardest pair for both NK groups, but NK2 had the largest advantage over NK1 for this pair. Apart from T2–T3 which is generally considered difficult, tone pairs involving T1 caused some misperception by the NK groups. This may be related to the difficulty with perceiving a level tone which shows the least fundamental frequency (F0) movement and possibly has limited perceptual salience.
... The experimental stimuli and procedures were identical to those used in previous research (e.g., Tsukada et al., 2015Tsukada et al., , 2016Tsukada & Han, 2019). Eight (four males, four females, mean = 27.8 years, sd = 9.2) native Mandarin speakers were recruited from the undergraduate student population at a university in Sydney, Australia. ...
... A categorial discrimination test widely employed in previous L2 segmental perception research (e.g., Flege & MacKay, 2004;Flege et al., 1999) was used in this study. The same procedures have been used to examine the perception of non-native tones (e.g., Tsukada et al., 2015Tsukada et al., , 2016Wayland & Guion, 2003. They entailed a four-alternative forced-choice oddity task, which does not require lexical access and is suitable for examining cross-linguistic perception processes used by participants who have no prior experience with the target language. ...
It is widely acknowledged that processing lexical tones is difficult for speakers from non-tonal language backgrounds. Furthermore, there is a split in the literature on cross-language tone processing, and whether native language experience with lexical tones plays a facilitative or inhibitory role is unresolved. This chapter presents results of empirical research that examined the perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native speakers of Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese who were unfamiliar with Mandarin. A group of ten native Mandarin speakers participated as controls. The three languages of interest have their own tonal systems. Thus, adult native speakers of these languages may be expected to benefit from their first language knowledge/experience in the cross-language tone processing. Despite this expectation, the three groups of non-native speakers varied widely in their discrimination accuracy of six Mandarin tone pairs (Tone 1 vs. 2, Tone 1 vs. 3, Tone 1 vs. 4, Tone 2 vs. 3, Tone 2 vs. 4, Tone 3 vs. 4). They were also clearly less accurate than a control group of native Mandarin speakers. The results will be discussed in relation to language-general and language-specific phonetic characteristics of native and non-native tonal systems.
... Other studies have demonstrated that perceptual training, especially using High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT), is effective both for perception (Thomson, 2018) and for improved production (Huensch, 2016;Sakai & Moorman, 2018). In JSLP, production-oriented studies have often been the default approach to pronunciation, but perception studies (beyond those rating intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness) have also been quite common, including studies of difficult segmental contrasts such as /v/-/w/ in English (Grover et al., 2021), studies of the perception of word stress (Romanelli et al., 2015;Schwab et al., 2024), studies of lexical tone perception (Đào & Nguyên, 2019;Silpachai, 2020;Tsukada et al., 2016), and the effects of grammaticality on perception (Ruivivar & Collins, 2019). There have also been several studies on the learner variables that affect pronunciation learning, such as motivation and aptitude, but like their instructional counterparts, those studies have primarily examined the effect of variables over a few months. ...
The Journal of Second Language Pronunciation, after 10 years, plays a central role in the field of L2 pronunciation. It remains the only professional journal specializing in research and evidence-based pedagogy for L2 pronunciation for all additional languages. This editorial looks back at the main themes that have been repeatedly seen in the journal, including questions highlighting the role of accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility; acquisition and development; the effects of formal instruction; perception and production; approaches to pronunciation research; and the role of technology and visualizations in L2 pronunciation learning.
... These problems constrained the development of computer-assisted pronunciation training and analysis of the relationship between measured F0 and perception. Most of the previous studies in tone perception [13] [22] [23] on subjects with different native languages use monosyllabic and disyllabic words as training and test materials. Although these studies have shown that students' ability to perceive or pronounce the tone of monosyllabic and disyllabic words has been improved after the training with speech materials labeled with tone values or raw F0 trajectories, it does not mean that students are as good at perceiving and pronouncing the tones of syllables in an utterance level. ...
... A number of studies have demonstrated the challenge of learning Mandarin tonal contrasts in adult non-native speakers, who come from a variety of linguistic backgrounds such as English (Hao, 2018(Hao, , 2023Shen & Froud, 2016), Dutch (Sadakata & McQueen, 2014;Zou et al., 2017), Thai (Wu et al., 2014), and Japanese (Tsukada et al., 2016). These findings (alongside others, e.g., Kann et al., 2008;Zhu et al., 2021) suggest that despite difficulties, adult speakers are capable of learning non-native tones to a certain degree. ...
This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from different language backgrounds and the effects of phonology, homophony, and rest on the outcome. We created Mandarin novel words varied by types of phonological contrasts and homophone status. During the experiment, native ( n = 34) and non-native speakers (English; n = 30) learned pairs of novel words and were tested twice with a 15-minute break in between, which was spent either resting or gaming. In the post-break test of novel word recognition, an interaction appeared between language backgrounds, phonology, and homophony: non-native speakers performed less accurately than native speakers only on non-homophones learned in pairs with tone contrasts. Eye movement data indicated that non-native speakers’ processing of tones may be more effortful than their processing of segments while learning homophones, as demonstrated by the time course. Interestingly, no significant effects of rest were observed across language groups; yet after gaming, native speakers achieved higher accuracy than non-native speakers. Overall, this study suggests that Mandarin novel word learning can be affected by participants’ language backgrounds and phonological and homophonous features of words. However, the role of short periods of rest in novel word learning requires further investigation.
... Most L2 speech learning studies on lexical tones either compare non-tonal language learners of different proficiency levels [3], [9], [10] or comparing tonal and non-tonal learners [11]. The former group of studies find that more experienced learners are better at perceiving some L2 tones and show more native-like perceptual patterns than those with less L2 experience or lower proficiency. ...
... However, what was left unaccounted for was which phonetic cues are crucial for Japanesespeaking listeners. In addition, Tsukada et al. (2016) compared Mandarin tonal perception by Japanese listeners with and without learning experience. Results indicated that Mandarin experience assisted learners to outperform naive counterparts for T2-T3, T1-T2 distinctions, and to be more immune to speakers and phonemic variations. ...
This study explores the effects of native prosodic system and segmental context on the perception of Cantonese tones by Mandarin and Japanese listeners. In Experiment 1, 13 Mandarin and 13 Japanese subjects took part in a two-alternative forced-choice discrimination test of Cantonese tones in different segmental contexts (familiar vs unfamiliar). In Experiment 2, 20 Mandarin listeners participated in a perceptual assimilation task that examined the cross-language perceptual similarity between Mandarin and Cantonese tones. Results showed that Mandarin listeners were comparable to Japanese counterparts in discriminability, but the former attended more to pitch contour differences while the latter were more sensitive to pitch height. Moreover, the effect of segmental context was significant exclusively in the Mandarin group, whereas the Japanese group performed stably across syllables in discriminating Cantonese tones. It seemed that unfamiliar context rendered lower perceptual similarity, which further hindered corresponding discrimination by the Mandarin group. In addition, segmental effects were mainly observed in the assimilation patterns of category goodness or uncategorized-categorized. These findings suggested that non-native tone perception could be modulated by listeners' native prosodic structures in a finer way.
This study examines first language (L1) phonological and phonetic influences on the perception of Vietnamese tones by Mandarin speakers learning Vietnamese as a second language (L2) in light of the Perceptual Assimilation Model. Participants were divided into two groups according to their length of classroom instruction, i.e. beginning (two months) and experienced (two years) learners. They first discriminated 15 Vietnamese tone contrasts and then mapped six Vietnamese tones onto their L1 Mandarin tone categories. The manner in which a Vietnamese tone contrast was mapped onto L1 categories (i.e. Categorized or Uncategorized) and the perceived overlap of L1 response categories of the contrast generally predicted its discrimination accuracy. Beginning and experienced learners exhibited differences in their perceptual assimilation of two Vietnamese tones but there was no significant difference in their accuracy of discriminating tone contrasts. The present study generally supports the Perceptual Assimilation Model and implications for L2 tone perception are discussed.
While the literature is well-represented in accounting for how aging influences segmental properties of speech, less is known is about its influences on suprasegmental properties such as lexical tones. Additionally, foreign language learning is increasingly endorsed as being a potential intervention to boost cognitive reserve and overall wellbeing in older adults. Empirical studies on young learners learning lexical tones are aplenty in comparison to older learners. Challenges in this domain for older learners might be different due to aging and other learner-internal factors. This review consolidates behavioral and neuroscientific research related to lexical tone, speech perception, factors characterizing learner groups, and other variables that would influence lexical tone perception and learning in older adults. Factors commonly identified to influence tone learning in younger adult populations, such as musical experience, language background and motivation in learning a new language are discussed in relation to older learner groups and recommendations to boost lexical tone learning in older age are provided based on existing studies.
The perception of vowels in a second language (L2) has been evaluated via tests of discrimination, categorization, and identification. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches, none of which is perfect, and then present a new perceptual testing technique that is designed to be sensitive to the creation of new phonetic categories. In the Categorical Discrimination Test (CDT) three naturally produced vowels spoken by different native English (NE) speakers are presented on each trial. Listeners must identify the serial position of the odd item out (50% of trials) or indicate they heard three different realization of the same category (50% of trials). Exemplary data is presented for NE speakers and speakers of Czech, Japanese, Hungarian, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Korean and Arabic who learned English as an L2.
The aim of our research is to understand how speech learning changes over the life span and to explain why "earlier is better" as far as learning to pronounce a second language (L2) is concerned. An assumption we make is that the phonetic systems used in the production and perception of vowels and consonants remain adaptiive over the life span, and that phonetic systems reorganize in response to sounds encountered in an L2 through the addition of new phonetic categories, or through the modification of old ones. The chapter is organized in the following way. Several general hypotheses concerning the cause of foreign accent in L2 speech production are summarized in the introductory section. In the next section, a model of L2 speech learning that aims to account for age-related changes in L2 pronunciation is presented. The next three sections present summaries of empirical research dealing with the production and perception of L2 vowels, word-initial consonants, and word-final consonants. The final section discusses questions of general theoretical interest, with special attention to a featural (as opposed to a segmental) level of analysis. Although nonsegmental (i.e., prosodic) dimensions are an important source of foreign accent, the present chapter focuses on phoneme-sized units of speech. Although many different languages are learned as an L2, the focus is on the acquisition of English.
This work is motivated by the desire to understand why individuals who learn an L2. especially those who began learning the L2 in late adolescence or adulthood, differ from monolingual native speakers of the target L2. A variety of proposals have been offered as to whether or how L2 speech learning is constrained in comparison to L1 speech learning. If constraints exists, do they differ for production and perception? Will certain learners inevitably differ from L2 native speakers? This chapter begins by reviewing theory and evidence relating to the production and perception of L2 phonetic segments. It considers how production and perception are related, and concludes with suggestions regarding goals for future future research
Language learners’ language experience is predicted to display a significant effect on their accurate perception of foreign language sounds (Flege, 1995). At the superasegmental level, there is still a debate regarding whether tone language speakers are better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers (i.e Lee et al., 1996; Burnham & Brooker, 2002). The current study aimed to shed some light on this issue. Specifically, 24 adult Thai and 21 adult English speakers, who had no knowledge on Mandarin prior to participation in the study, were recruited. The participants’ accuracy in the perception of 4 Mandarin tones (T1, T2, T3, T4) was individually examined using an identification test. 288 stimuli of /ti/, /ta/, /tu/, /tʂhi/, /tʂha/, and /tʂhu/ produced in 4 Mandarin tones were prepared. The stimuli were embedded in a carrier sentence, and were produced by a female and a male native Mandarin speaker. According to the results, (1) none of the participants achieved 100% accuracy in any of the perception tests; (2) in the perception of Mandarin T1 and T4, the Thai speakers significantly outperformed the English speakers; (3) the Thai speakers and the English speakers displayed very similar degrees of difficulty in the perception of Mandarin T2 and T3; (4) the Thai participants’ most serious confusion was in the discrimination of T2-T3, whereas the English participants showed significant confusion in the identification of T1-T2 and T2-T3. The findings suggest that tone language speakers may benefit more from their L1 in the perception of foreign lexical tones than did the non-tone language speakers. However, the degree of the beneficial effect identified was limited.
Two experiments focus on Thai tone perception by native speakers of tone languages (Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin), a pitch–accent (Swedish), and a nontonal (English) language. In Experiment 1, there was better auditory-only and auditory–visual discrimination by tone and pitch–accent language speakers than by nontone language speakers. Conversely and counterintuitively, there was better visual-only discrimination by nontone language speakers than tone and pitch–accent language speakers. Nevertheless, visual augmentation of auditory tone perception in noise was evident for all five language groups. In Experiment 2, involving discrimination in three fundamental frequency equivalent auditory contexts, tone and pitch–accent language participants showed equivalent discrimination for normal Thai speech, filtered speech, and violin sounds. In contrast, nontone language listeners had significantly better discrimination for violin sounds than filtered speech and in turn speech. Together the results show that tone perception is determined by both auditory and visual information, by acoustic and linguistic contexts, and by universal and experiential factors.
Two groups of non-native adult learners of Mandarin in Australia were directly compared in their ability to perceive monosyllabic Mandarin words contrasting in lexical tones. They differed in their linguistic experience (non-heritage (n=10), heritage (n=12)). A group of eight native Mandarin speakers and a group of ten functionally monolingual speakers of Australian English were included as controls. All non-native learners used English as their primary language of communication. However, the heritage learners were able to communicate in Cantonese as well as English. The primary question of interest was whether heritage learners' knowledge of contrastive tone in Cantonese might give them an advantage over English-speaking learners in perceiving tone contrasts in Mandarin. In general, there were more similarities than differences between the two groups of learners in their response patterns. Of the six tone contrasts examined (T1-T2, T1-T3, T1-T4, T2-T3, T2-T4, T3-T4), the two groups significantly differed only on T1-T4. The heritage learners were less accurate on T1-T4 than the non-heritage learners who are monolin-gual speakers of Australian English. On the other hand, the non-heritage learners were more accurate than Australian English speakers with no prior experience with Mandarin on all tone contrasts. Thus, we conclude that simply having an exposure to and functional knowledge of another tonal language since early childhood does not guarantee accurate perception of Mandarin tones in comparison with adult learners without prior experience with tonal languages.
This study investigates the possible errors related to Mandarin tone perception and production by German speakers. In a preliminary test, 23 German listeners should identify the tones of 186 monosyllables. Results show that exposure to Mandarin Chinese can help to discriminate lexical tones as highly expected. In the main experiment, 17 German subjects were asked to take part in a perception and production test. Stimulus of perception involves 48 monosyllables uttered by a standard professional Chinese speaker; acoustic measures were conducted to analyze the production of 72 monosyllables for each subject. It is found that German speakers have much smaller f0 range than Chinese native speakers. Findings can provide implications for cross language studies and teaching practices.
Using Best's (1995) perceptual assimilation model (PAM), we investigated auditory-visual (AV), auditory-only (AO), and visual-only (VO) perception of Thai tones. Mandarin and Cantonese (tone-language) speakers were asked to categorize Thai tones according to their own native tone categories, and Australian English (non-tone-language) speakers to categorize Thai tones into their native intonation categories-for instance, question or statement. As comparisons, Thai participants completed a straightforward identification task, and another Australian English group identified the Thai tones using simple symbols. All of the groups also completed an AX discrimination task. Both the Mandarin and Cantonese groups categorized AO and AV Thai falling tones as their native level tones, and Thai rising tones as their native rising tones, although the Mandarin participants found it easier to categorize Thai level tones than did the Cantonese participants. VO information led to very poor categorization for all groups, and AO and AV information also led to very poor categorizations for the English intonation categorization group. PAM's predictions regarding tone discriminability based on these category assimilation patterns were borne out for the Mandarin group's AO and AV discriminations, providing support for the applicability of the PAM to lexical tones. For the Cantonese group, however, PAM was unable to account for one specific discrimination pattern-namely, their relatively good performance on the Thai high-rising contrast in the auditory conditions-and no predictions could be derived for the English groups. A full account of tone assimilation will likely need to incorporate considerations of phonetic, and even acoustic, similarity and overlap between nonnative and native tone categories.
Previous studies on Mandarin tone production indicate that there is no agreement on which tones are most difficult for L2 learners. Much of previous research on L2 learning of Mandarin tones has focused on monosyllables. In modern Mandarin, however, it is disyllabic words that dominate the vocabulary. This research investigates the production of Mandarin disyllabic tones by Japanese learners. In the current study, 25 Japanese learners of Mandarin were requested to produce 80 Mandarin disyllabic words with all tonal combinations (except for the neutral tone). The overall results showed a hierarchy of difficulty: Tone 3 > Tone 2 > Tone 1 = Tone 4. Most errors in the first syllable were found for Tone 2 and Tone 3 when followed by Tone 1 or Tone 4 (both start with a high pitch). In the second syllable, most errors were found for Tone 3 (misproduced as Tone 2). The findings are discussed in terms of the phonetic nature of Mandarin lexical tones and the interference from Japanese phonology.
This study used a multi-talker database containing intelligibility scores for 2000 sentences (20 talkers, 100 sentences), to identify talker-related correlates of speech intelligibility. We first investigated "global" talker characteristics (e.g., gender, F0 and speaking rate). Findings showed female talkers to be more intelligible as a group than male talkers. Additionally, we found a tendency for F0 range to correlate positively with higher speech intelligibility scores. However, F0 mean and speaking rate did not correlate with intelligibility. We then examined several fine-grained acoustic-phonetic talker-characteristics as correlates of overall intelligibility. We found that talkers with larger vowel spaces were generally more intelligible than talkers with reduced spaces. In investigating two cases of consistent listener errors (segment deletion and syllable affiliation), we found that these perceptual errors could be traced directly to detailed timing characteristics in the speech signal. Results suggest that a substantial portion of variability in normal speech intelligibility is traceable to specific acoustic-phonetic characteristics of the talker. Knowledge about these factors may be valuable for improving speech synthesis and recognition strategies, and for special populations (e.g., the hearing-impaired and second-language learners) who are particularly sensitive to intelligibility differences among talkers.
This study investigates whether native Hmong speakers' first language (L1) lexical tone experience facilitates or interferes with their perception of Mandarin tones and whether training is effective for perceptual learning of second (L2) tones. In Experiment 1, 3 groups of beginning level learners of Mandarin with different L1 prosodic background (Hmong, Japanese, and English) took a perception test on Mandarin tones. Both the English and Japanese groups outperformed the Hmong group in perceptual accuracy of Mandarin tones. In Experiment 2, 18 learners with different L1 background received either perception training only or perception with production training on Mandarin tones for 6 hours within 3—4 weeks. Both training paradigms were effective for perceptual learning of Mandarin tone contrasts as the two training groups' perceptual accuracy improved significantly at posttest compared with a control group. Although Hmong speakers initially had more difficulties in perception of Mandarin tones than the other 2 groups, they are by no means disadvantaged by their L1 prosodic background as they gain L2 experience after intensive training.
This study examined how native speakers of Australian English, and French, non-tone languages
with different rhythmic properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment,
according to their native prosodic categories. Results showed that both English and French
speakers perceptually categorized Mandarin tones into their native intonational categories (i-
Categories), mainly based on the contextual phonetic similarities of the pitch contours between
the Mandarin tones and their i-Categories. Moreover, French speakers, but not English speakers,
were able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic feature differences between Tone 3 and Tone 4
(low/falling tone vs. high-falling tone) suggesting that rhythmic differences between languages
may affect non-native tone perception: Both French and Mandarin are syllable-timed languages,
but English is a stress-timed language. On the discrimination task, the French listeners’
performance was better than did that of the English listeners. For each group, percent correct
discrimination of the T1-T4 and T2-T3 pairs was consistently and significantly lower than that of
the other tone pairs (but the difference between T1-T4 and T2-T3 was not significant in the
French group). Discrimination performance differences between assimilation pairs of the same
type were observed. Phonetic overlaps in native category choices for the Mandarin Tone pairs,
strength of categorization ((So & Best, Under review)) and tonal co-articulation effects ((Xu,
1994, 1997)), provide further explanations of these apparent discrepancies between
categorization and discrimination performance. These findings support PAM for
suprasegmentals ((So & Best, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, Under review)), extended to perceiving
non-native tone-words within sentence contexts.
Multiple-level tone contrasts are typologically disfavoured because they violate the dispersion principles of maximizing perceptual distance and minimizing articulatory effort. This study investigates the tonal dispersion of a multiple-level tone system by exploring the cues used in producing and perceiving the five level tones of Black Miao. Both production and perception experiments show that non-modal phonations are very important cues for these tonal contrasts. Non-modal phonations significantly contribute to the dispersion of the five level tones in two ways: either by enhancing pitch contrasts or by providing an additional contrastive cue. Benefiting from more than one cue, the level tones T11, T33 and T55 are well distinguished in the tonal space; by contrast, the level tones T22 and T44, only contrasting in pitch, are the most confusable tones. The tonal registers model proposed in this article sheds light on the different uses of non-modal phonations across languages. © 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.
Previous work has not yielded clear conclusions about the categorical nature of perception of tone contrasts by native listeners of tone languages. We reopen this issue in a cross-linguistic study comparing Taiwan Mandarin and French listeners. We tested these listeners on three tone continua derived from natural Mandarin utterances within carrier sentences, created via a state-of-the-art pitch-scaling technique in which within-continuum interpolation was applied to both f0 and intensity contours. Classic assessments of categorization and discrimination of each tone continuum were conducted with both groups of listeners. In Experiment 1, Taiwanese listeners identified the tone of target syllables within carrier sentence context and discriminated tones of single syllables. In Experiment 2, both French and Taiwanese listeners completed an AXB identification task on single syllables. Finally, French listeners were run on an AXB discrimination task in Experiment 3. Results indicated that Taiwanese listeners’ perception of tones is quasi-categorical whereas French listeners’ is psychophysically based. French listeners nevertheless show substantial sensitivity to tone contour differences, though to a lesser extent than Taiwanese listeners. Thus, the findings suggest that despite the lack of lexical tone contrasts in the French language, French listeners are not absolutely “deaf” to tonal variations. They simply fail to perceive tones along the lines of a well-defined and finite set of linguistic categories.
The current study investigates the learning of nonnative suprasegmental patterns for word identification. Native English-speaking adults learned to use suprasegmentals (pitch patterns) to identify a vocabulary of six English pseudosyllables superimposed with three pitch patterns (18 words). Successful learning of the vocabulary necessarily entailed learning to use pitch patterns in words. Two major facets of sound-to-word learning were investigated: could native speakers of a nontone language learn the use of pitch patterns for lexical identification, and what effect did more basic auditory ability have on learning success. We found that all subjects improved to a certain degree, although large individual differences were observed. Learning success was found to be associated with the learners' ability to perceive pitch patterns in a nonlexical context and their previous musical experience. These results suggest the importance of a phonetic–phonological–lexical continuity in adult nonnative word learning, including phonological awareness and general auditory ability.
Auditory training has been shown to be effective in the identification of non-native segmental distinctions. In this study, it was investigated whether such training is applicable to the acquisition of non-native suprasegmental contrasts, i.c., Mandarin tones. Using the high-variability paradigm, eight American learners of Mandarin were trained in eight sessions during the course of two weeks to identify the four tones in natural words produced by native Mandarin talkers. The trainees' identification accuracy revealed an average 21% increase from the pretest to the post-test, and the improvement gained in training was generalized to new stimuli (18% increase) and to new talkers and stimuli (25% increase). Moreover, the six-month retention test showed that the improvement was retained long after training by an average 21% increase from the pretest. The results are discussed in terms of non-native suprasegmental perceptual modification, and the analogies between L2 acquisition processes at the segmental and suprasegmental levels.
The results reported in this paper indicate that native speakers of Mandarin Chinese rate the perceptual similarities among the lexical tones of Mandarin differently than do native speakers of American English. Mandarin listeners were sensitive to tone contour while English listeners attended to pitch levels. Chinese listeners also rated tones that are neutralized by phonological tone sandhi rules in Mandarin as more similar to each other than did English speakers--indicating a role of phonology in determining perceptual salience. In two further experiments, we found that some of these differences were eliminated when the listening task focused listeners' attention on the auditory properties of the stimuli, but, interestingly, a degree of language specificity remained even in the most purely psychophysical listening tasks with speech stimuli.
This study examines the perception of short and long vowels in Arabic and Japanese by three groups of listeners differing in their first languages (L1): Arabic, Japanese, and Persian. While Persian uses the same alphabet as Arabic and Iranian students learn Arabic in school, the two languages are typologically unrelated. Further, unlike Arabic or Japanese, vowel length may no longer be contrastive in modern Persian. In this study, a question of interest was whether Persian listeners' foreign language learning experience or Japanese listeners' L1 phonological experience might help them to accurately process short and long vowels in Arabic. In Experiment 1, Arabic and Japanese listeners were more accurate than Persian listeners in discriminating vowel length contrasts in their own L1 only. In Experiment 2, Arabic and Japanese listeners were more accurate than Persian listeners in identifying the length categories in the "other" unknown language as well as in their own L1. The difference in the listeners' perceptual performance between the two experiments supports the view that long-term L1 representations may be invoked to a greater extent in the identification than discrimination test. The present results highlight the importance of selecting the appropriate test for assessing cross-language speech perception.
This study examined the perception of the four Mandarin lexical tones by Mandarin-naïve Hong Kong Cantonese, Japanese, and Canadian English listener groups. Their performance on an identification task, following a brief familiarization task, was analyzed in terms of tonal sensitivities (A-prime scores on correct identifications) and tonal errors (confusions). The A-prime results revealed that the English listeners' sensitivity to Tone 4 identifications specifically was significantly lower than that of the other two groups. The analysis of tonal errors revealed that all listener groups showed perceptual confusion of tone pairs with similar phonetic features (T1-T2, T1-T4 and T2-T3 pairs), but not of those with completely dissimilar features (T1-T3, T2-T4, and T3-T4). Language-specific errors were also observed in their performance, which may be explained within the framework of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007). The findings imply that linguistic experience with native tones does not necessarily facilitate non-native tone perception. Rather, the phonemic status and the phonetic features (similarities or dissimilarities) between the tonal systems of the target language and the listeners' native languages play critical roles in the perception of non-native tones.
This study investigated the perceptual dimensions of tone in Vietnamese and the effect of dialect experience on listener's prelinguistic perception of tone. While Northern Vietnamese tones are cued by a combination of pitch and voice quality, Southern Vietnamese tones are purely pitch based. 30 listeners from two Vietnamese dialects (10 Northern, 20 Southern) participated in a speeded AX discrimination task using northern stimuli. The resulting reaction times were used to compute an INDSCAL multidimensional scaling solution and were submitted to hierarchical clustering analysis. While the analysis revealed a similar three-dimensional perceptual space structure for both listener groups, corresponding roughly to f(0) offset, voice quality, and contour type, the relative salience of these dimensions varied by dialect: Southern listeners were more likely to confuse tones produced with nonmodal voice quality, whereas Northern listeners found tones with similar pitch excursions to be more confusable. The results of hierarchical clustering of the stimuli further support an analysis where low-level perceptual similarity is influenced by primary dialect experience.
A listener’s ability to discriminate non-native sound contrasts has been shown to be largely influenced by the listener's native phonological system (Best et al., 2003; Tyler et al., 2014; Tskuda, 2012). Looking specifically at suprasegmental contrasts, experimental results suggest that the degree to which pitch is used to distinguish lexical items in a speaker’s L1 influences how well they are able to detect non-native tone contrasts (Schaefer & Darcy, 2014). However, these results are based only on Thai tones. The present study shows that native speakers of English (a stress language), and Mandarin (a tone language) do not perform significantly differently in their ability to perceive Vietnamese tone contrasts. Results from an ABX categorization task show that native speakers of English are not more likely to make errors in categorizing Vietnamese tones than native speakers of Mandarin, and both groups have difficulty perceiving the difference between the low falling tone and the low falling-rising tone. These results suggest that the acoustic properties of a tone, such as the register and the contour, contributes more to how well non-native speakers can discriminate a contrast than does the L1 of the listener.
This study examines the discrimination of Mandarin vowels and tones by native English speakers with varying amounts of Mandarin experience, aiming to investigate the relative difficulty of these two types of sounds for English speakers at different learning stages, and the source of their difficulty. Seventeen advanced learners of Mandarin (Ex group), eighteen beginning learners (InEx group), and eighteen English speakers naïve to Mandarin (Naïve group) participated in an AXB discrimination task. The stimuli were two Mandarin vowel contrasts, /li-ly/ and /lu-ly/, and two tonal contrasts, T1-T4 and T2-T3. The predicted difficulty for each contrast was hypothesized based on the assimilation of these sounds to English reported in previous work. The results showed that the Naïve group was more accurate with vowel contrasts than with tones, suggesting that non-tonal language speakers without any Mandarin training are less sensitive to tonal distinction than to vowels. The two learner groups, on the other hand, were highly accurate with all contrasts except for the T2-T3 pair, and achieved significantly higher accuracy than the Naïve group on /li-ly/ and T1-T4. This lends support to the view that experience in Mandarin improves English speakers' sensitivity to tonal distinction, helping them discriminate some tones as accurately as vowels. However, all three groups achieved low accuracy in discriminating T2 and T3, suggesting that this contrast may be inherently difficult and resistant to improvement. This study shows that various factors in addition to the native language experience may affect the perception of non-native vowels and tones.
There are few studies on the role of phonation cues in the perception of lexical tones in tonal languages where pitch is the primary dimension of contrast. This study shows that listeners are sensitive to creaky phonation in native tonal perception in Cantonese, a language in which the low falling tone, Tone 4, has anecdotally been reported to be sometimes creaky. First, in a multi-speaker corpus of lab speech, it is documented that creak occurs systematically more often on Tone 4 than other tones. Second, for stimuli drawn from this corpus, listeners identified Tone 4 with 20% higher accuracy when it was realized with creak than when it was not. Third, in a two-alternative forced choice task of identifying stimuli as Tone 4 or Tone 6 (the low level tone) isolating creak from any concomitant pitch cues, listeners had a higher proportion of Tone 4 responses for creaky stimuli. Finally, listeners had more Tone 4 responses for creaky stimuli with longer durations of nonmodal phonation. These results underscore that differences in voice quality contribute to human perception of tone alongside f0. Automatic tonal recognition and clinical applications for tone would benefit from attention to voice quality beyond f0 and pitch.
Due to their similar concave shapes, Tones 2 and 3 are said to be the most confusable pair in Mandarin, and no reliable perceptual cues have been found. The purpose of this perceptual study was to find (1) the perceptual cues for discriminating these two tones, and (2) the possible causes of listeners’ misidentifications. Experiment 1 was designed to test the hypothesis that the timing of the turning point may constitute a perceptual cue. Two fundamental frequency continua were superimposed on the syllable [wu] and the location of the turning point was manipulated in each. A binary forced-choice identification test was given to Mandarin listeners. The results show that the distinction between Tones 2 and 3 is cued by the timing of the turning point, which is correlated with the degree of the initial fall. In Experiment 2, ten minimal pairs of Tones 2 and 3 spoken by four native speakers were presented to Mandarin listeners for labeling. Acoustic analysis of the mis-labeled tokens indicates that mistakes occurred when the correlation between the timing of the turning point and the degree of the initial fall was violated.
Productions of Tone 4 and Tone 3 (mài/măi, ‘sell’/‘buy’) in comparable sentences suggest that although the two tones are realized in different ways by different speakers in different speech acts, some features are constant. Tone 3 is connected with a low pitch level throughout the second half of the vowel and Tone 4 with a gradual fall over the main part of the vocalic segment. These observations were tested in a series of manipulations of pitch movements over mài from Tone 4 to Tone 3 in the sentence Sòng Yán mài niúròu. The manipulated sentences were presented in a test, in which listeners were asked if they heard mài or năi. The result confirmed the observed constant features and indicated in addition that it was important for both tones to have a clear reference. The identification of Tone 4 was favoured by an introductory rising or level part, and for Tone 3 an introductory fall seemed to be important. Creaky voice is a concomitant but not a necessary feature of Tone 3.
This volume is a collection of 13 chapters, each devoted to a particular issue that is crucial to our understanding of the way learners acquire, learn, and use an L2 sound system. In addition, it spans both theory and application in L2 phonology. The book is divided into three parts, with each section unified by broad thematic content: Part I, “Theoretical Issues and Frameworks in L2 Phonology,” lays the groundwork for examining L2 phonological acquisition. Part II, “Second Language Speech Perception and Production,” examines these two aspects of L2 speech in more detail. Finally, Part III, “Technology, Training, and Curriculum,” bridges the gap between theory and practice. Each chapter examines theoretical frameworks, major research findings (both classic and recent), methodological issues and choices for conducting research in a particular area of L2 phonology, and major implications of the research findings for more general models of language acquisition and/or pedagogy.
This study investigated the ability to discriminate the middle and low tone contrasts in Thai by two groups of native English (NE) speakers and a control group of native Thai (NT) speakers. The first group was comprised of NE speakers who had no prior experience with Thai, whereas subjects in the second group were experienced learners of Thai (EE). The variables under investigation were experience with Thai, discrimination of open versus closed syllables, and the interstimulus interval (ISI) of the presentation (500 vs 1500 ms). The results obtained indicated that the NT group obtained higher discrimination scores than the NE or EE groups, the EE group obtained higher discrimination scores than the NE group, all three groups of subjects found open syllables to be more difficult to discriminate than closed syllables, and subjects in the EE group obtained higher discrimination scores for open syllables in the shorter than the longer ISI condition.
Evidence indicates that perceptual assimilation of segments is tied to L1 and L2 contrasts at a lower phonetic level for listeners without L2 experience, but at both a phonetic and a higher phonological level for those with L2 experience. It is less clear, however, that the same is true for suprasegmental features. In this examination of perceptual assimilation of lexical tones, 40 listeners, whose L1 and L2 are one of the two tone languages, Mandarin and Thai, along with another 40 native listeners of the two tone languages without L2 experience performed a mapping-rating assimilation task in which they first identified which L1 tone sounded most similar to the L2 tone they heard, and then rated the goodness of match on a 5-point scale. The inexperienced listeners assimilated L2 tones to L1 tones with the most similar acoustic properties, i.e., F0 height and contour. The experienced listeners were additionally influenced by phonological tone changes in Mandarin. In particular, falling rising tones were assimilated to the rising tone or low falling tone in Mandarin or Thai and vice versa. These findings are discussed in relation to current conceptions of perceptual assimilation.
This study examined whether native speakers of non-tone languages (Australian English,
and French) were able to perceive foreign Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according
to their native prosodic categories. Results found that both English and French
speakers were able to perceptually categorize foreign tones into their intonational categories
(i-Categories), and that categorizations were based on the contextual phonetic similarities
of the pitch contours they perceived between Mandarin tones and their native
i-Categories. Results also showed that French speakers, but not English speakers, were
able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic feature differences between Tone 3 and Tone 4
(low/falling tone vs. high-falling tone). The findings support a new extension of the Perceptual
Assimilation Model (PAM; Best 1995) to suprasegmental phonology (So and
Best 2008): that non-native prosodic categories (e.g. lexical tones) will be assimilated to
the categories of listeners’ native prosodic system (e.g. intonation). In addition, rhythmic
differences among languages may also contribute to perception of non-native tones.
This study examines whether second language (L2) learners from tonal and non-tonal first language (L1) backgrounds differ in their perception and production of L2 tones. Ten English-speaking and nine Cantonese-speaking learners participated in Experiment 1, which consisted of the following three tasks: identifying auditory tonal stimuli using Mandarin tonal labels (Identification), mimicking tonal stimuli (Mimicry), and producing tones based upon Mandarin tonal labels (Reading). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the Cantonese group did not perform significantly better than the English group in perceiving and producing Mandarin tones. Both groups had significant difficulty in distinguishing Mandarin Tone 2 (T2) and Tone 3 (T3), and the Cantonese group also had additional trouble distinguishing Mandarin Tone 1 (T1) and Tone 4 (T4). Overall, across the different tasks of Experiment 1 learners had similar accuracy rates and error patterns, indicating comparable tone perception and production abilities. However, learners were significantly better at mimicking tones than at identifying or reading them, suggesting that the major difficulty learners faced in acquiring Mandarin tones was associating pitch contours with discrete tonal labels. This difficulty, however, may be specific to tone acquisition. Seven of the nine Cantonese participants took part in Experiment 2, which assessed their perceptual assimilation of Mandarin tones to Cantonese tones. The results of Experiment 2 helped explain Cantonese learners' T1–T4 confusion by showing that these two tones were mapped onto overlapping Cantonese tonal categories. However, the mapping results would not predict prevailing T2–T3 confusion as observed in Experiment 1, suggesting that this confusion stemmed from factors outside of learners' L1 experience. This study argues that the T2–T3 contrast is hard for L2 learners regardless of their native languages, because of these two tones' acoustic similarity and complex phonological relationship. This suggests that for explaining difficulties in acquisition of certain L2 sounds, factors other than learners' L1 background may also play a significant role.
For adult English speaking students of Mandarin, tones pose a very difficult hurdle to pass over.
This paper first identifies some sources of difficulties, then classifies and analyzes them. Suggestions to remedy the difficulties have also been made as follows: (1) a new determinancy of the low- dipping contour of the 3rd tone as the norm with other contours as derivations from this norm; (2) new tone drill materials written on music scales, which help the learner to transform from tonemic abstractions to phonetic realities.
Tests and experiments have been carried out from 1980 to 1983. The results have confirmed the effectiveness of these suggestions.
The experiment presented in this paper shows that Northern and Southern Vietnamese tones in isolation are identified by listeners through a small set of acoustic properties. Each of these perceptual cues is used for more than one tone, which suggests that listeners establish economical patterns of perceptual contrast. Although the two dialects under study share common identification cues, they also exhibit differences, especially with respect to the use of voice quality, which is an important cue in Northern Vietnamese but only plays a limited role in Southern Vietnamese. Results further suggest that Southern Vietnamese listeners can adjust their perception strategies to northern cues, which is expected since Northern Vietnamese is the standard national variety. Interestingly, the phonetic properties of tones (perceptual or acoustic) do not match the phonologically active tone classes of Vietnamese. Based on these results, previous models of Vietnamese tone features are challenged and a model of abstract tonal categories associated with a flexible phonetic knowledge is argued for.
This paper reports a study of the production of Thai vowels, consonants, and tones by native English speakers using two forms of evaluation acoustic measurements and auditory evaluation by native Thai-speaking listeners The investigation focused on (a) the acoustic parameters along which the two groups of speakers differ, and (b) which of these acoustic parameters influenced native listeners' judgments of perceived degree of accentedness
Three native Thai speakers and 6 native English speakers were tape recorded in an oral reading task Speech analysis showed that the two groups of speakers differed more along the spectral dimension (namely formant frequencies and fundamental frequency) than the temporal dimension (namely voice-onset time and vowel duration) When the productions of both the native speakers and the non-native speakers were rated for accentedness, the rating data showed that non-native production were rated for accentedness, the rating data showed that non-native production can be readily distinguished from native production Only some non-native tokens were judged as ‘native-like’ Moreover, the rating scores for the non-native speakers were lower in level tones than contour tones, suggesting different degrees of difficulty for each tone When the acoustic data were regressed on the rating data, significant predictors were spectral in nature and were found mostly for level tones Moreover, no correlation between years of experience with That and the rating scores was found.
Results are discussed in terms of a ‘holistic’ versus an ‘analytic’ approach in tone processing by adults, inherent acoustic characteristics of individual tones as well as quantity and quality of the native input Furthermore, the fact that some non-native tokens were judged as ‘native-like’ seems to challenge the claim that segmental as well as suprasegmental errors arise from the loss of ability to learn non-native sounds
This study used the same methodology in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to examine the perceived accuracy of monosyllabic Mandarin tones produced by 4- and 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children growing up in Taiwan and combined the findings with those of 3-year-olds reported in Wong [J. Speech Lang. Hear. Res. 55, 1423-1437 (2012b)] to track the development of monosyllabic tone production in preschool children. Tone productions of adults and children were collected in a picture naming task and low-pass filtered to remove lexical information and reserve tone information. Five native-speakers categorized the target tones in the filtered productions. Children's tone accuracy was compared to adults' to determine mastery and developmental changes. The results showed that preschool children in Taiwan have not fully mastered the production of monosyllabic Mandarin tones. None of the tones produced by the children in the three age groups reached adult-like accuracy. Little developmental change was found in children's tone accuracy during the preschool years. A similar order of accuracy of the tones was observed across the three age groups and the order appeared to follow the order of articulatory complexity in producing the tones. The findings suggest a protracted course of development in children's acquisition of Mandarin tones and that tone development may be constrained by physiological factors.
This textbook is designed to be used in an undergraduate laboratory course in human experimental psychology, in which students obtain hands-on experience in designing experiments, setting up apparatus, running subjects, analyzing and interpreting data, and writing up the results as a research report.
This textbook effectively integrates the content of experimental psychology with its methods.
The book is organized into 3 sections. Part I, design methodology, describes what experiments are [and] how to design them . . . , and how to avoid pitfalls in carrying them out.
Part II of the book describes content areas in experimental psychology.
Part III of the book covers procedural methodology—the nuts and bolts of experimentation. It describes, [the] ingredients that make up the Methods section of a research report. . . . Examples from our files of student research reports are used to illustrate what not to do, and their corrections are shown to illustrate what to do. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Results of three tests involving identification of Mandarin (Peking dialect) tonemes by Australian first-year students arc presented. It appears that when identification also involves other phonetic features of the utterance the number of mistakes is appreciably higher than when identification of tones only is made. It has also been observed that the majority of errors result from incorrect identification of the second (rising) tone and from confusion between the third (falling-rising) and the second tones. The least number of errors was made in identifying the fourth (falling) and first (high-level) tones.
This study investigated the ability to discriminate the middle and low tone contrasts in Thai by two groups of native English (NE) speakers and a control group of native Thai (NT) speakers. The first group was comprised of NE speakers who had no prior experience with Thai, whereas subjects in the second group were experienced learners of Thai (EE). The variables under investigation were experience with Thai, discrimination of open versus closed syllables, and the interstimulus interval (ISI) of the presentation (500 vs 1500 ms). The results obtained indicated that the NT group obtained higher discrimination scores than the NE or EE groups, the EE group obtained higher discrimination scores than the NE group, all three groups of subjects found open syllables to be more difficult to discriminate than closed syllables, and subjects in the EE group obtained higher discrimination scores for open syllables in the shorter than the longer ISI condition. The majority of the world's languages use tone or pitch variations to convey semantic information at the lexical level (Goldsmith, 1994). Phonetic attributes of tones in various languages have also been described by linguists (e.g., Abram- son, 1978; Gandour, 1979, 1983; Saravari & Imai, 1983). However, there have been relatively few studies on the acquisition of tones in the first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition literature. Studies in child language acquisition reported that tone-language infants use pitch to convey affect at around 8 months, which is earlier than their use of either pitch or segments to convey lexical contrast (e.g., Clumeck, 1980; Luksaneeyanawin, 1976). More- over, the acquisition of tones appears to be relatively easier than that of seg- ments and is completed at around the age of 23 months (e.g., Clumeck, 1980; Tuaycharoen, 1977, cited in Burnham & Francis, 1997). Fernald (1989, 1993) suggested that children may be more sensitive to pitch variation than adults.
The ability of native English (NE) and native Chinese (NC) speakers to identify and discriminate the mid- versus the low-tone contrast in Thai was investigated before and after auditory training. The variables under investigation were first language background and the interstimulus interval (ISI) of the presentation (500 ms vs. 1500 ms). The NC group outperformed the NE group in its ability to discriminate the two Thai tones under the ISI 500 ms condition before training and under both ISI conditions after training. A significant improvement in identification from the pretest to the posttest was observed in the NC group under both ISI conditions, but not in the NE group. These results suggest that prior experience with the tone system in one tone language may be transferable to the perception of tone in another language.