Prosodic challenges faced by English speakers reading Mandarin

This study compares the prosodic characteristics of L2-Mandarin as spoken by L1-English speakers using L1-Mandarin utterances. The acoustic correlates examined include individual tonal realizations, interactions of tones in sequence, durational features and intensity envelopes. L2-Mandarin users realize the contour tones RISE and FALL with both rising and falling pitch, and produce the second tone of disyllabic words with more varied pitch. L2-users employ larger vowel durations, syllable durations and larger variation over vowel intervals in sequential pairs than L1-Mandarin users. Both user groups show similar intensity envelopes. Implications of this study include tailoring language training programs that counterbalance L1 influences

a corpus-based analysis of tonal, syllabic and segmental aspects

Due to its history of language contact with French, modern Vietnamese contains numerous loanwords of French origin, many of which refer to a variety of culturally transmitted items (such as clothing, food, technology, tradeable objects more generally). The present study deals with the phonological aspects of such loans, considering tone, syllable structure and segmental structure. The analysis is based on a corpus of roughly 500 Vietnamese nouns of French origin that, according to native speakers’ judgments, are still in use. As for tonal structure, generalizations about tone assignment made in previous research are modified. The systematic analysis of repair strategies applying to French consonant clusters in onsets and codas shows that Vietnamese generally prefers deletion over epenthesis, unlike many other languages, with two additional repair processes being attested in specific contexts, as well

Prosody of tone Sandhi in Vietnamese reduplications

In this paper we take advantage of the segmental control afforded by full and partial Vietnamese reduplication on a constant carrier phrase to obtain acoustic evidence of assymetrical prominence relations (van der Hulst 2005), in support of a hypothesis that Vietnamese reduplications are phonetically right headed and that tone sandhi is a reduction phenomenon occurring on prosodically weak positions (Shih 2005). Acoustic parameters of syllable duration (onset, nucleus and coda), F0 range, F0 contour, vowel intensity, spectral tilt and vowel formant structure are analyzed to determine: (1) which syllable of the two (base or reduplicant) is more prominent and (2) how the tone sandhi forms differ from their full reduplicated counterparts. Comparison of full and partial reduplicant syllables in tone sandhi forms provide additional support for this analysis

Neutral Tone in Mandarin: Representation and Interaction with Utterance-level Prosody

In Standard Mandarin, there are syllables that do not carry any of the four citation tones (T1: High-level tone, T2: Mid-rising tone, T3: Low-convex tone and T4: High-falling tone), and they are said to have a neutral tone (NT). These syllables are usually shorter, lighter, prosodically grouped with the preceding CT-bearing syllables. These characteristics of NT have led to a prevailing view that it has no underlying phonological specification. However, research has focused more on how the surface pitch variations of NT are realized rather than the underlying representation of NT. In contrast, morphological, sociolinguistic and diachronic work on NT has suggested that NT may not be a homogeneous entity. In this thesis, I provide acoustic and psycholinguistic evidence that there are two types of NT, Intrinsic NT and Derived NT. Intrinsic NT refers to morphemes that were lexicalized as tone-deleted, unstressed syllables even before the formation of the four CTs of modern Mandarin. Derived NT refers to morphemes derived from the CTs via stress-related tone-deletion. In Part A, the phonological representation of Intrinsic and Derived NT is explored through two production and two processing experiments. The results show that Intrinsic NT is likely to have an underspecified tonal target while Derived NTs are underlyingly CTs. In addition, both subtypes of NT are metrically light, unlike heavy CTs. Part B explores the interaction between NTs and utterance-level prosody in production and perception experiments. NT-bearing syllables have lengthening patterns under focus similar to CT-bearing syllables, in contrast to the realization of unstressed syllables in English. In perception, the identification of intonation (Statement vs. Question) on Intrinsic NT was similar to Derived NT. When compared to CTs, the NTs elicit less bias towards question than T4, and higher accuracy than T2, which may result from their simpler surface representations.CHINA Scholarship COUNCIL (CSC) and Cambridge Trus

Predicting tonal realizations in one Chinese dialect from another

Pronunciation dictionaries are usually expensive and time-consuming to prepare for the computational modeling of human languages, especially when the target language is under-resourced. Northern Chinese dialects are often under-resourced but used by a significant number of speakers. They share the basic sound inventories with Standard Chinese (SC). Also, their words usually share the segmental realizations and logographic written forms with the SC translation equivalents. Hence the pronunciation dictionaries of northern Chinese dialects could be easily available if we were able to predict the tonal realizations of the dialect words from the tonal information of their SC counterparts. This paper applies statistical modeling to investigate the tonal aspect of the related words between a northern dialect, i.e. Jinan Mandarin (JM), and Standard Chinese (SC). Multi-linear regression models were built with between-word pitch distance of JM words as the dependent variable and the following were included as the predictors: SC tonal relations, between-dialect tonal identity, and individual backgrounds. The results showed that tonal relations in SC and between-dialect identity, as predictors featuring the relation between the JM and SC tonal systems, are significant and robust predictors of JM tonal realizations. The speakers’ sociolinguistic and cognitive backgrounds, together with the tonal merge and neutral tone information within JM, are important for the prediction of JM tonal realizations and affect the way that between-language predictors take effect

Phonetically Identical Forms can Have Different Phonological Behaviors

There is a lot of research since at least mid-1980s documenting the effect of incomplete neutralization of phonological contrasts. Some researchers have taken this as evidence against traditional formal phonology where categorical phonological representation is assumed. By such way of using phonetic measurement to directly infer phonological representation, two assumptions have been made. First, phonetically different forms should be different in phonology; Second, phonetically identical forms should be identical in phonology. The first assumption has been largely undermined in the case of prosodic words lengthening in Japanese. It has been showed that although lengthened prosodic word has identical phonological behavior with their underlying counterpart in Japanese, their durations are significantly different. As an attempt to oppose the second assumption, the current study investigates Tone 4 Sandhi of Huai’an Mandarin. I show that although Lexically Derived Tone 3 is phonetically indistinguishable from Post-Lexically Derived Tone 3 with regard to F0, their phonological behaviors are different with regard to the ability to trigger another tone sandhi process. F0 is measured since it contains all critical phonetic cues that can distinguish Mandarin tones

Phonological Prominence and Its Interaction with Tone in Chinese Dialects

Earlier studies on Chinese have recognized that there are prominent positions, and there are interactions between tone and prominent positions. However, the earlier studies have not rigorously applied phonetic or phonological inspections for establishing prominent positions in Chinese. When more rigorous phonetic and phonological examinations have been applied in this study, a more constrained and principled set of prominence phenomena emerged. This set excludes the postulation of a generalized trochaic system in Standard Mandarin, accentual prominence in New Chongming and peripheral prominence in Zhenhai. On the other hand, this set includes metrical prominence in the Northern Wu dialects and Fengkai Cantonese, and the interaction between tone and metrically prominent positions. In this study, two types of interaction between metrical prominence and tone are attested. First, metrically strong positions are characterized by the preservation of lexical tones, or the ability to determine the shape of the neighboring tones. Thus, the stressed position normally licenses a larger range of tonal contrast. Unstressed syllables tend to go tonal modification, reduction, or loss. Second, tone can condition stress placement. Observations made in the Northern Wu dialects suggest that stress assignment is sensitive to tone properties. In the Northern Wu group, the distribution of stress tends to avoid syllables with a low tone, or a short tone. To summarize, although Chinese is widely recognized as a canonical tone language, stress and tone as two independent phonological properties do co-exist in Chinese. The co-existence of tone and stress leads to some interesting interactions. However, tone-stress interaction in Chinese produces a limited set of phonological processes, which is only attested in a limited number of dialects

The word-level prosodic system of Mangghuer

Mangghuer’s prosodic system has been described as a stress system (Slater 2003), and alternately, because of a few minimal pairs, as a system that is undergoing tonogenesis. (Dwyer 2008). This thesis looks at new data to evaluate both of these claims. I analyze the prosody of native words and confirm that Mangghuer has a stress system. Duration is one of the indicators of stress, which has not been mentioned in previous literature. Potential minimal pairs are considered, including the minimal tone pairs that Dwyer found; her minimal pairs are not minimal pairs in my data. However, one set of nativized Chinese borrowings form a minimal tone pair by contrasting the pitch on the unstressed syllable. There are two pairs of words that have a high/falling distinction on the stressed syllable, which are not perceived as phonemically distinct. The high and the falling pitch distinctions are still associated with stress, but the evidence shows that the stress system is transitioning to a mixed prosodic system that uses both stress and tone

Pitch ability as an aptitude for tone learning

Tone languages such as Mandarin use voice pitch to signal lexical contrasts, presenting a challenge for second/foreign language (L2) learners whose native languages do not use pitch in this manner. The present study examined components of an aptitude for mastering L2 lexical tone. Native English speakers with no previous tone language experience completed a Mandarin word learning task, as well as tests of pitch ability, musicality, L2 aptitude, and general cognitive ability. Pitch ability measures improved predictions of learning performance beyond musicality, L2 aptitude, and general cognitive ability and also predicted transfer of learning to new talkers. In sum, although certain nontonal measures help predict successful tone learning, the central components of tonal aptitude are pitch-specific perceptual measures

The acquisition of segments and tones in Mandarin: An observational and experimental study

This is a study of early word learning and phonological development in children learning Mandarin Chinese in Singapore. Previous work has analysed mostly children’s perception and acquisition of segments and tones in the language. The objective of this thesis is to study children’s production and examine whether the asymmetry in segmental and tonal information found in perception tasks may also be apparent in tasks requiring production. Mandarin-learning children’s speech forms are systematically investigated here by integrating two strands of research: a naturalistic observational study (N = 4) of the influences of long(er)-term knowledge on phonological development in Mandarin is complemented by an experimental study (N = 20) of short-term retrieval and production of nonword repetition. The thesis is based on the whole-word approach to the study of children’s lexical development and how it may apply to Mandarin, identifying the use of phonological templates and how they may be manifested in Mandarin. Results from both production tasks reveal independence in the developmental trajectory of segment and tone production. It was not possible to conclusively identify any segmental templates. However, there was evidence of use of two T1-x tone templates, which suggest ways in which the whole-word approach might apply here: a salient and well-practiced tone (T1) since the babbling period provides a ‘tone envelope’ for segments to fill in. The well-practiced T1-x motoric routines involve lesser cognitive load, allowing attention to be directed to the (mostly variegated) segmental sequences, so that children may still achieve relatively good matches to the variegated word structures of Mandarin. Thus, there is an interchange between segments and tones and perception and production: tone perception and production begin early but tone production is mastered late, segment perception and production occur later but segment production is mastered before tone is