Production of lexical tones by Southern Min-Mandarin bilinguals (original) (raw)
Related papers
Mechanisms of tone sandhi rule application by tonal and non-tonal non-native speakers
Speech Communication, 2019
This study is the first comprehensive acoustic study to examine the acquisition of two Mandarin tone sandhi rules: the third tone sandhi and the more phonetically motivated, half-third sandhi rule by both tonal (Cantonese) and non-tonal (American English) speakers using a Wug Test. Participants were asked to form disyllables from two monosyllabic morphemes. To test for the operation of the lexical versus the computation mechanisms in sandhi rule application, both real and various types of wug (nonsense) morphemes were included. Functional data analysis revealed that Cantonese and American speakers apply the two rules similarly on both real words and wug words, suggesting that the sandhi forms are stored as part of the representation of the abstract Tone 3 (T3) category, and computation of allophonic variants is likely to be involved during production. However, in their computation of tone sandhi rules, L2 learners showed less detailed and less accurate production of tonal contours compared to native speakers, due, perhaps, to less detailed phonological representations of allophonic variants. In general, Cantonese speakers performed better than American speakers. Perceptual mapping between Mandarin sandhi T3 to existing Cantonese tone categories may be responsible for the observed pitch contours among Cantonese speakers. Finally, no phonetic bias was found in the application of the two sandhi rules among these groups of L2 learners, which is likely due to more variability in L2's speech, obscuring any differences that may exist.
Tonal patterns of the Mandarin Third Tone Sandhi produced by Japanese speaking L2 learners
Proceedings of Speech Prosody, 2024
While extensive research has been conducted on the L2 perception and production of Mandarin lexical tones, the higher prosodic patterns, such as tone sandhi, remain less explored. This study examined the L2 production of the Mandarin Third Tone Sandhi (T3 Sandhi) by Japanese speakers at two Mandarin proficiency levels (intermediate and advanced). The participants read disyllabic stimuli with all possible tonal combinations of the T3 Sandhi. Different from the common approach which mainly relied on native speakers' categorization of L2 learners' tone production, we adopted a data-driven approach using hierarchical clustering to identify the distinct tonal patterns for each T3 Sandhi combination within each group. The results revealed a complex interplay of various factors influencing L2 production of the Mandarin T3 Sandhi, such as L1 Japanese pitch accent patterns, phonetic motivation of different T3 Sandhi, and L2 Mandarin tone inventory. The suspected influence from L1 Japanese pitch accent patterns is noted in intermediate-level learners, but advanced learners can overcome such influence. In both L2 learner groups, we found over-generalization of T3 Sandhi. In general, our study showed the transfer of L1 phonological processing to L2 tone sandhi production at an earlier stage of L2 acquisition.
Trisyllabic Tone 3 Sandhi Patterns in Mandarin Produced by Cantonese Speakers
Interspeech 2017
The third tone sandhi in Mandarin is a well-studied rule, where a Tone 3 followed by another Tone 3 is changed as a rising tone, similar to Tone 2. This Tone 3 sandhi rule is straightforward in disyllabic words, which is phonetically driven for the ease of production. In three or more than three syllables with Tone 3, however, the Tone 3 sandhi application is more complicated and involves both the prosodic and morph-syntactic domains, which makes it difficult for L2 learners. This study aims to understand how L2 learners with another tone language experience could master the Mandarin Tone 3 sandhi rule. Specifically, the study investigates the production of Tone 3 sandhi in trisyllabic Mandarin words by Cantonese speakers. In the current study, 30 Cantonese speakers were requested to produce 15 trisyllabic words ("1+[2+3]" and "[1+2]+3" sandhi patterns) and 5 hexasyllabic sentences with Tone 3 in sequences. The analyses of results center on three major types of error patterns: overgeneralization, under application, and combination. The findings are discussed with regard to the phono-syntactic interactions of Tone 3 sandhi at the lexical and phrasal levels as well as the influence of the Cantonese tonal system.
The perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native Japanese and Thai listeners
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2013
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.
Testing the Role of Phonetic Naturalness in Mandarin Tone Sandhi
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, 2006
It has long been noted that phonological patterning is influenced by phonetic factors. But phonologists diverge on whether phonetic motivations take effect in synchronic or diachronic phonology. This article aims to tease apart the two theories by investigating native Mandarin speakers' applications of two tone sandhi processes to novel words: the phonetically motivated contour reduction 213 21/__T (T 213) and the neutralizing 213 35/__213 whose phonetic motivations are less clear. Twenty Mandarin subjects were asked to produce two monosyllables they heard as disyllabic words. Five groups of disyllabic words were tested: AO-AO (AO=actual occurring morpheme) where the disyllable is also a real word, AO-AO' where the disyllable is nonoccurring, AO-AG (AG=accidental gap in Mandarin lexicon -legal syllable and tone but non-existent combination), AG-AO, and AG-AG. The first syllable is always 213, and the second syllable has one of the four tones in Mandarin. Results show that speakers apply the phonetically more natural 213 21 sandhi more quickly and with greater accuracy than the 213 35 sandhi. Theoretically, the study supports the direct relevance of phonetics to synchronic phonology by showing that there is a psychological advantage to phonetically natural patterns. Methodologically, it complements existing research paradigms that test the nature of the phonology-phonetics relationship, e.g., the study of phonological acquisition and the artificial language paradigm; when extended to other Chinese dialects, it can also provide insights into the long-standing mystery of how Chinese speakers internalise complicated tone sandhi patterns that sometimes involve opacity, near-neutralization, and syntactic dependency.
2018
This study is the first to examine the effect of perceptual training on Mandarin tone sandhi production by Cantonese speakers. Auditory and visual inputs of tone sandhi contrasts were included in a short-term laboratory training, and the training was followed by an identification test. Twenty-four native speakers of Cantonese participated in the study, which comprised the training session and a preand post-training recording session. There were 192 target stimuli of real words and wug words and 192 filler words in each recording session. Two native Mandarin-speaking linguists perceptually evaluated a total of 23040 syllables on a 101-point scale. The results show that Cantonese speakers may be able to improve their lexical word production in the context of T3+T1/T2/T4 by perceptual training or high familiarity of stimuli, whereas the application of Mandarin sandhi Tone 3 slightly improves within a short time. Besides, the participants consistently apply Mandarin half-third tone sand...
A Comparison of Low and Middle Level Tones in Cantonese with Tones in Mandarin Chinese
2014
L'objectif de l'article est une recherche des mots chinois mandarin prononces avec des tons moyens et bas que l'on retrouveraient en cantonais. La comparaison de prononciation entre les deux dialectes met en evidence une certaine correspondance de tons. Ainsi l'auteur propose d'etudier les quatre correspondances regulieres - mais non systematiques - mises en evidence par cette etude : 1. les tons hauts descendants du cantonais correspondent aux tons haut du mandarin, 2. les tons bas descendants du cantonais correspondent aux tons hauts ascendants du mandarin 3. les tons bas et haut montants du cantonais correspondent aux tons bas montants du mandarins et, enfin, 4. les tons moyens et bas du cantonais correspondent aux tons descendants du mandarin
2016
An acoustically-based description is given of the isolation tones and right-dominant tone sandhi in disyllabic words of a male speaker of the Chinese Oūjiāng 甌江 Wu吳 dialect of Wencheng 文成. His seven isolation tones show typical Wu complexity, comprising two mid-level, two rising, two falling-rising and one depressed level pitch shapes. Typical too is his three-way voicing contrast in syllable-Onset stops. However, the typical Wu relationship between tonal register and phonemic Onset voicing is shown to be disrupted, Onset voicing no longer correlating with tonal pitch height. The word-final tones in sandhi are shown to be straightforwardly related, phonologically and phonetically, to the isolation tones, with biuniqueness preserved. The realization of the word-initial tones in sandhi, on the other hand, involves complex mergers conditioned by largely non-phonetic factors related to historical tone categories, resulting in five extra sandhi tones that do not occur in isolation. It is...
How Pitch Moves: Production of Cantonese Tones by Speakers with Different Tonal Experiences
Tonal Aspects of Languages 2016, 2016
This study investigates how native prosodic systems as well as L2 learning experience shape non-native tone production in terms of tone movement, a primary cue to tone identity. In an imitation task, the six Cantonese tones were produced by four speaker groups: native Mandarin speakers (tonal), native English speakers (non-tonal), native English speakers with Mandarin learning experience (L2 tonal) and native Cantonese speakers (control group). The results indicate that native prosodic systems influence non-native tone production: Mandarin speakers are more accurate on pitch contour than pitch height while English speakers perform better on level tones than contour ones. Furthermore, L2 tonal experience assists L3 tone production, as English-speaking Mandarin learners produce Cantonese tones in the most native-like shape, outperforming both Mandarin and English speakers.