Not Vowel Epenthesis: Mandarin and Japanese ESL learners’ production of English consonant clusters (original) (raw)
Related papers
Epenthesis, intrusion, or deletion? Vowel alternation in consonant clusters by Japanese ESL learners
2011
This study investigates whether vowel insertion in English consonant clusters produced by Japanese English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners is due to misarticulation or misinterpretation. Intermediate level Japanese ESL learners read aloud written English words and mimicked auditory English words. The results showed that the participants inserted a vowel in consonant clusters notably less frequently in the mimicking task than in the reading task, suggesting that the participants can perceive and produce consonant clusters. The participants were also asked to divide each stimulus word into syllables, and they often clearly pronounced extra vowels: e.g. 'ba-domin-ton' for 'badminton.' I conclude that vowel insertion is not because of their inability to articulate consonant clusters, but their misinterpretation that there is a vowel where there is actually not. When they mimicked auditory stimuli, they phonetically deleted such vowels, but vowels still existed in their phonological representations.
Lexical schwa and inserted schwa produced by Mandarin Chinese EAL learners
Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle, 2013
This study examines different types of vowel/schwa insertion in L1 illegal English consonant clusters by Mandarin Chinese (MC) Englishas-an-additional-language (EAL) learners, as well as differences and similarities in phonetic qualities among inserted vowels by MC EAL learners, lexical schwas by MC EAL learners, and lexical schwas by native Canadian English (CE) speakers. In this study we have conducted a reading, a repetition and two syllabification tasks with 6 intermediate MC EAL speakers and 3 native CE speakers. There are three main findings: 1) Even with written cues, two MC EAL speakers likely have underlying vowels, which do not exist in native English speakers" underlying representation (UR); three MC speakers may have inserted excrescent schwas due to gestural mistiming rather than phonological schwas, and one MC speaker may have inserted excrescent schwas, because the individual likely has had extraprosodic consonants that are not linked to the syllable nodes. 2) English lexical schwas produced by CE speakers tend to be more variant in the second formant (F2) than those produced by MC learners, and lexical schwas by MC EAL learners have been occasionally rhotacized and deleted/devoiced. 3) MC EAL learners may not have explicitly understood the English syllable structures, even though some of them are aware of the presence or absence of vowels. Based on the findings, this paper proposes that it is important for instructors and learners to be aware that language learners may exhibit several different error types in the production of consonant sequences. Meanwhile, MC EAL learners may benefit from explicitly knowing the concept of English syllables. fully figured out. Also, Nogita and Fan"s model is unable to handle learners who are aware of the presence or absence of vowels but are not aware of syllabification as a higher prosodic unit than segments. This study examines the nature of MC EAL learners" vowel insertion, and adds another pattern of vowel insertion (i.e., extraprosodic consonants) to their model, as a follow-up study of . This study replicates their study, in which the participants produced English nonsense words with L1 illegal consonant clusters and orally syllabified each stimulus word. The purpose of the design is to examine L2 learners" underlying representation (UR), and investigate acoustic properties of MC EAL learners" inserted schwa-like sounds, their lexical schwas, and native English speakers" lexical schwas.
The acquisition of English vowels by Mandarin ESL learners: A study of production and perception
1997
Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographic f Services. services bibliographiques 395 WBllington Street 395. we Weltington-Ottawa ON K1 A ON4 pnawa ON K1 A OW' Canada ' L , Canada The author has granted a nonexclusive licence allowing the National ~i b r a r~ of Canada to reproduce, loan, distribute or sell copies of this thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats. The author retains ownershp of the copyright in t h i s thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it may be printed or otherwise-. Your (rk, Votre r6ferenm Our file Norre refdrencs L'auteur a accorde h e licence nonexclusive pennettant a la Bibliotheque nationale ~L L Canada de reproduire, pr$e!, distribuer ou vendre des coples de cette these sous la fonne de microfiche/film, de. . reproduction sur papier ou sur format ~lectroni~uel L'auteur conserve la propriete du , droit d'auteur qui protege cette these. Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent Stre imprimes .
Epenthetic vowel production of unfamiliar medial consonant clusters by Japanese speakers
Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 2019
Existing nativized loanword studies have traditionally suggested that there are three epenthetic vowels in Japanese, which reflect both phonotactic restrictions and articulatory properties of certain consonant-vowel sequences in the language. Recent findings, however, call this tri-partite epenthesis pattern into question: First, several studies suggest that this epenthesis pattern is not true in the realm of perception and is not completely regular in production, and second, the relevant phonotactic restrictions seem to be weakening even outside of epenthesis contexts. This paper therefore investigates the extent to which the spontaneous choice of epenthetic vowels in the production of Japanese conforms to the traditional tri-partite pattern. Epenthesis was induced by presenting pseudo-word stimuli of the form of [aCCa] (C = a voiced consonant) to subjects orthographically. The findings suggest that indeed, the production pattern does not fully conform to what is generally reported for nativized loanwords; in particular, the traditionally "default" vowel [ɯ] is used by our participants frequently in all contexts, including the two where [o] or [i] is usually reported. That said, we also show that there is considerable variability across speakers as to which vowel is epenthesized, especially in the palatal context, and this variability includes tokens of vowels similar to all possible lexical vowels of Japanese.
Context-and experience-based effects on the learning of vowels in a second language
Status: published or submitted for publication, 2001
The objective of the present study was to investigate how adult language learners perceive the relationship between native (LI) and second-language (L2) vowels in different phonetic contexts and how L2 experience intluences this ability. Previous research has revealed that, in their perception of this relationship, L2 learners may erroneously perceiveas distinct LI phonemeswhat are actually allophones (i.e., context-determined phonetic realizations of phonemes) in their L2 and that the amount of L2 experience may affect the extent to which they do so. Two hypotheses were proposed. The first hypothesis was that inexperienced L2 learners would perceive allophones of a given L2 phoneme as being distinct phonemes in their LI. The second hypothesis was that, unlike inexperienced learners, more experienced L2 learners would perceive various allophones of a given L2 phoneme as being instantiations of a single phoneme in their LI. Results provided support for both of these hypotheses. The findings of the present study thus provide important insights into the role of phonetic context and experience in L2 vowel learning and into the dynamic and often complex nature of the interaction between LI and L2 phonetic systems. 0.
Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners of English
Journal of Phonetics, 1997
This paper investigates the roles of language-specific phonological learning and inherent phonetic contrastiveness in the perception of non-native vowels . Native speakers of Korean and Japanese , at two levels of English language experience , were assessed on the perception and production of Australian English monophthongal non-back vowels : / i : I e ( a : / . Prototypicality ratings , or perceived similarities of the foreign vowels to their nearest native (L1) phonemic targets , were also examined , to assess models of cross-language vowel perception . Korean is of interest because of a recent phonological merger of two front vowels ( / e / and / E / ) , which has produced a generation split among speakers of Seoul dialect above and below 45 -50 years of age (Hong , 1991) . The present study is the first reported case of how a phonemic merger , resulting in cross-generation dif ferences within a speech community , can influence speakers' perception and production of non-native vowels . The ef fects of L1 phonological learning on vowel perception were also observed in the tendency of the Japanese , but not the Korean listeners , to normalize tokens of non-native vowels for speaker-dependent durational variation , consistent with the respective phonological roles of vowel length in Japanese and Korean .
2016
The main focus of this dissertation is to investigate to what extent Japanese Englishas-an-additional-language (EAL) learners have mastered default grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) patterns of North American English vowels. The underlying motivation of this research comes from my observation that many mispronunciations of English vowels by Japanese EAL learners in formal learning settings are caused by their misinterpretation of English spellings rather than by phonological factors. Traditionally, Japanese speakers’ mispronunciations of English vowels have been attributed to a phonological factor that there is a mismatch of vowel inventories between English and Japanese. However, Nogita and Lin (2016) found that when vowel length and diphthongization are taken into consideration, native Japanese speakers are able to produce all the 13 North American English vowels although not necessarily in a native-like manner. This seems to suggest that other factors than the vowel inventory...
Epenthetic vowels in Japanese: A perceptual illusion?
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1999
In four cross-linguistic experiments comparing French and Japanese hearers, we found that the phonotactic properties of Japanese (very reduced set of syllable types) induce Japanese listeners to perceive "illusory" vowels inside consonant clusters in VCCV stimuli. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used a continuum of stimuli ranging from no vowel (e.g. ebzo) to a full vowel between the consonants (e.g. ebuzo). Japanese, but not French participants, reported the presence of a vowel [u] between consonants, even in stimuli with no vowel. A speeded ABX discrimination paradigm was used in Experiments 3 and 4, and revealed that Japanese participants had trouble discriminating between VCCV and VCuCV stimuli. French participants, in contrast had problems discriminating items that differ in vowel length (ebuzo vs. ebuuzo), a distinctive contrast in Japanese but not in French. We conclude that models of speech perception have to be revised to account for phonotactically-based assimilations.
Segmental Acquisition in Adult ESL Learners: A Longitudinal Study of Vowel Production
Language Learning, 2008
Research on second language (L2) phonetic learning indicates that, even in adults, segmental acquisition remains possible through L2 experience. However, the findings of previous cross-sectional studies of vowel and consonant learning have proved difficult to interpret. In this longitudinal investigation of 44 recent arrivals in Canada, productions of 10 English vowels in CVC context were elicited at 2-month intervals and evaluated by trained and untrained listeners. Improved intelligibility was observed, even in the absence of focused instruction on vowels. The results support the proposal that L2 phonetic learning is initially rapid but tends to plateau within a few months. However, this finding is complicated by different learning trajectories across vowels, differential L1 influences, and possible effects of word frequency.
Production of English vowels by speakers of Mandarin Chinese with prolonged exposure to English
Previous studies of non-native production of English vowels have demonstrated that a native-like attainment of certain distinctions is not guaranteed for all speakers, despite prolonged exposure to the target (e.g., . The current study examines the applicability of this finding to a group of non-native speakers from the same L1 background (Mandarin Chinese) who are all long-term residents in the USA (7 years minimum) and adult arrivals (> age 18). These non-native speakers (N=36) and a control group of native speakers (N=22) were recorded reading two sets of materials: the Stella paragraph (Weinberg 2012) and five sentences from Flege et al. (1999). Vowel formant measurements were extracted for all tokens from the following three pairs of vowels: [i], [e], and [a]. Euclidean distances between the z-normalized (F1, F2) mean values for the two vowels in each pair for each speaker show that the non-native speakers produce each of the three pairs significantly less distinctly than the native speakers. This finding corroborates previous similar findings and suggests that a speaker's L1 continues to have a strong influence on vowel production, despite long-term exposure to the target.