The Perception of Mandarin Lexical Tones by Native Speakers of Burmese

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 625-640 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Mariko Kondo
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Discrimination Test ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Mandarin Tones ◽  
English Group

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.

Comparison of native versus nonnative perception of vowel length contrasts in Arabic and Japanese

2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-516 ◽  
Author(s):  
KIMIKO TSUKADA
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Discrimination Test ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Limited Experience ◽  
Phonetic Contrasts ◽  
Australian English

ABSTRACTThis study assessed the prediction that individuals are able to use the knowledge from their first language (L1) in processing the comparable sound contrasts in an unknown language. Two languages, Arabic and Japanese, which utilize vowel duration contrastively, were examined. Native Arabic (NA) and native Japanese (NJ) listeners' discrimination accuracy for native (known) and nonnative (unknown) vowel length contrasts was assessed in an AXB discrimination test. A group of Australian English (OZ) speakers who do not know either Arabic or Japanese participated as a control group. Despite the expectation that native listeners positively transfer and generalize the L1 knowledge to process unknown languages with equivalent phonetic characteristics, both the NA and NJ groups were clearly less accurate in discriminating vowel length contrasts in unknown languages. Further, they showed no advantage over the OZ listeners who have limited experience with vowel length contrasts in their L1. These results suggest that, not only for stop place contrasts examined previously, but also for vowel length contrasts, experience with specific phonetic contrasts may not be sufficient for attaining truly nativelike discrimination accuracy.

Effects of First Language Background and Learning Experience in Perceiving Mandarin Lexical Tones: Learners and Nonlearners From English- and Japanese-Speaking Backgrounds

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Kaori Idemaru
Keyword(s):  
Discrimination Task ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
First Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Classroom Experience ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Japanese Speakers ◽  
Mandarin Tones

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.

The perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native Korean speakers differing in their experience with Mandarin

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Jeong-Im Han
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Discrimination Test ◽  
Advanced Learners ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Level Tone

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.

CROSSLINGUISTIC DIFFERENCES IN IMPLICIT LANGUAGE LEARNING

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 733-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janny H. C. Leung ◽  
John N. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
English Word ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Language Knowledge ◽  
Native Speakers Of English ◽  
English Group ◽  
Chinese Group

We report three experiments that explore the effect of prior linguistic knowledge on implicit language learning. Native speakers of English from the United Kingdom and native speakers of Cantonese from Hong Kong participated in experiments that involved different learning materials. In Experiment 1, both participant groups showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and noun animacy. In Experiment 2, neither group showed learning of a mapping between articles and a linguistically anomalous concept (the number of capital letters in an English word or that of strokes in a Chinese character). In Experiment 3, the Chinese group, but not the English group, showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and a concept derived from the Chinese classifier system. It was concluded that first language knowledge affected implicit language learning and that implicit learning, at least when natural language learning is concerned, is subject to constraints and biases.

Non-native Japanese learners’ perception of consonant length in Japanese and Italian

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Felicity Cox ◽  
John Hajek ◽  
Yukari Hirata
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Identification Task ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Linguistic Experience ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Japanese Learners

Learners of a foreign language (FL) typically have to learn to process sounds that do not exist in their first language (L1). As this is known to be difficult for adults, in particular, it is important for FL pedagogy to be informed by phonetic research. This study examined the role of FL learners’ previous linguistic experience in the processing of a contrast absent in the L1. The FLs under investigation are Japanese and Italian, which both use contrastive consonant length. Two groups of non-native Japanese (NNJ) learners – L1 Australian English (OZ) and L1 Korean – participated in the consonant length identification task. Neither OZ nor Korean has an underlying consonant length contrast, but Korean has non-contrastive lengthening of tense obstruents with corresponding shorter preceding vowels, which may be beneficial in perceiving consonant length in an FL. We have taken a novel, two-stage approach. First, we compared the perception of Japanese long/geminate and short/singleton consonants by the two groups of NNJ learners. Second, we investigated whether FL Japanese learning by the two groups transfers to the processing of consonant length in an unknown language, Italian. Native speakers of Japanese (NJ) and Italian (NI) were included as controls. They were familiar with contrastive consonant length in their L1, but were naïve to the other language. The NJ and NI groups accurately identified the consonant length category in their L1 but were slightly less accurate in the unknown language. The two NNJ groups were generally accurate (> 80%) in perceiving consonant length not only in Japanese, but also in Italian. However, the direction of NNJ learners’ misperception (i.e. singleton as geminate or geminate as singleton) varied, suggesting that some learners, according to their L1, may categorize length in Japanese and Italian differently rather than uniformly applying the concept of [±long].

PHONETIC INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH AND FRENCH LISTENERS’ ASSIMILATION OF MANDARIN TONES TO NATIVE PROSODIC CATEGORIES

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connie K. So ◽  
Catherine T. Best
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Discrimination Performance ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Pitch Contours ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Mandarin Tones ◽  
Prosodic Categories ◽  
Mandarin Tone

This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according to their native sentence intonation categories (i-Categories) in connected speech. Results showed that both English and French speakers categorized Mandarin tones primarily on the phonetic similarities of the pitch contours between the Mandarin tones and their native i-Categories. Moreover, French but not English speakers were able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic differences between Tone 3 (T3) and Tone 4 (T4; i.e., low or low-falling tone vs. high-falling tone), which suggests that the stress differences between these languages may affect nonnative tone perception: English uses lexical stress, whereas French does not. In the discrimination task, the French listeners’ performance was better than that of the English listeners. For each group, discrimination of the Tone 1 (T1)–T4 and Tone 2 (T2)–T3 pairs was consistently and significantly lower than that of the other tone pairs, and the difference between T1-T4 and T2-T3 was significant. Discrimination of the Mandarin tone pairs was not fully predicted by pairwise categorizations to native i-Categories, however. Some discrimination differences were observed among tone pairs showing the same assimilation patterns. Phonetic overlaps in native i-Category choices for the Mandarin tones, strength of categorization (So, 2012), and tonal coarticulation effects (Xu, 1994, 1997) may offer possible accounts of these discrepancies between categorization and discrimination performance. These findings support the perceptual assimilation model for suprasegmentals (So & Best, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013), extended to categorization of nonnative tone words within sentence contexts to native i-Categories.

The perception of Mandarin lexical tones by listeners from different linguistic backgrounds

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Hui Ling Xu ◽  
Nan Xu Rattanasone
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Response Patterns ◽  
Heritage Learners ◽  
Lexical Tones ◽  
Accurate Perception ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Mandarin Tones

AbstractTwo 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 monolingual 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.

An acoustic comparison of English monophthongs and diphthongs produced by Australian and Thai speakers

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
First Language ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Temporal Characteristics ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Phonetic Categories ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Asian Languages

This study investigated acoustic-phonetic characteristics of English vowels (four monophthongs /I æ ~ %/ and two diphthongs /eI o~/) spoken by native speakers of Australian English (AusE, n = 6) and Thai (T, n = 15). The Thai speakers had lived in Australia for an average of 3.2 years. While the Thai speakers did not differ significantly from the AusE speakers in their vowel quality for monophthongs, they were more dissimilar in their production of diphthongs. Specifically, the Thai speakers produced English diphthongs with less formant movement, a phenomenon widely reported for speakers of various other Southeast Asian languages. Differences between the Thai and AusE groups reached statistical significance for the female speakers. As for temporal characteristics, the Thai speakers produced significantly shorter monophthongs, but not diphthongs, than did AusE speakers. As a result, the ratio of monophthongs to diphthongs was much smaller for the Thai (0.53) than for the AusE group (0.72). It appeared that the Thai speakers equated the English diphthongs /eI/ and /o~/ with the long vowels /e˜/ and /o˜/, respectively, in their first language (L1) Thai. Further, their production of the diphthongs may be related to a large number of diphthongs in the Thai vowel inventory, which may encourage its speakers to substitute existing L1 categories for English diphthongs rather than forming authentic, new phonetic categories.

Discrimination of English and Thai words ending with voiceless stops by native Thai listeners differing in English experience

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada ◽  
Rungpat Roengpitya
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
First Language ◽  
High Accuracy ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
School Students ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Phonetic Learning ◽  
Australian English

This study examines the discrimination of words ending with voiceless stops /p t k/ in first language (L1) and second language (L2) by three groups of native Thai participants. These participants differed in their countries of residence and experience with L2 English in the formal education system. The first group (T1) was a group of 18 Thai listeners who were living in Australia. The second and third groups consisted of 12 university students (T2) and 12 high-school students (T3) living in Thailand. Eighteen Australian English (AusE) listeners were included as controls. English and Thai words minimally contrasting in the final stop (e.g. ‘cap’ vs. ‘cat’) were presented to the listeners to investigate whether L2 phonetic learning occurs even for the contrasts that are expected to be discriminated with high accuracy from the onset of L2 learning and if so, how it is influenced by L2 experience. All three Thai groups showed reasonably accurate discrimination for both English and Thai words, but only T1 showed discrimination accuracy comparable to AusE in English. Further, only T3 was clearly more accurate in discriminating unreleased Thai than English stop contrasts, most of which were accompanied with release bursts. These two findings are taken to be evidence for phonetic learning of specific aspects of L2 contrasts rather than positive L1 transfer.

Non-native Japanese listeners’ perception of vowel length contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA)

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiko Tsukada
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Modern Standard Arabic ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Carry Over ◽  
Modern Standard

This study aimed to compare the perception of short vs. long vowel contrasts in Japanese and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) by four groups of listeners differing in their linguistic backgrounds: native Arabic (NA), native Japanese (NJ), non-native Japanese (NNJ) and Australian English (OZ) speakers. The NNJ and OZ groups shared the first language (L1), but differed in their familiarity with Japanese. In both Japanese and MSA, vowel length is phonemic. In contrast, vowel duration plays a more limited (although not insignificant) role in English. Of interest was the discrimination accuracy of NNJ listeners who learned Japanese as a second (L2) or foreign language in adulthood. As expected, the NA and NJ groups discriminated their L1 contrasts more accurately than all the other groups, but the NNJ listeners showed a significant shift in their perceptual behaviour and outperformed the OZ listeners who have no knowledge of Japanese in discriminating the Japanese vowel length contrasts. Furthermore, NNJ was the only group who did not differ in their discrimination accuracy for the Arabic and Japanese stimuli. Taken together, the results obtained in this study suggest that NNJ learned to discriminate Japanese vowel length contrasts to some extent, but the learning did not carry over cross-linguistically to the processing of vowel length contrasts in an unknown language.

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