Perception of nonnative tonal contrasts by Mandarin-English and English-Mandarin sequential bilinguals

This study examined the role of acquisition order and crosslinguistic similarity in influencing transfer at the initial stage of perceptually acquiring a tonal third language (L3). Perception of tones in Yoruba and Thai was tested in adult sequential bilinguals representing three different first (L1) and second language (L2) backgrounds: L1 Mandarin-L2 English (MEBs), L1 English-L2 Mandarin (EMBs), and L1 English-L2 intonational/non-tonal (EIBs). MEBs outperformed EMBs and EIBs in discriminating L3 tonal contrasts in both languages, while EMBs showed a small advantage over EIBs on Yoruba. All groups showed better overall discrimination in Thai than Yoruba, but group differences were more robust in Yoruba. MEBs’ and EMBs’ poor discrimination of certain L3 contrasts was further reflected in the L3 tones being perceived as similar to the same Mandarin tone; however, EIBs, with no knowledge of Mandarin, showed many of the same similarity judgments. These findings thus suggest that L1 tonal experience has a particularly facilitative effect in L3 tone perception, but there is also a facilitative effect of L2 tonal experience. Further, crosslinguistic perceptual similarity between L1/L2 and L3 tones, as well as acoustic similarity between different L3 tones, play a significant role at this early stage of L3 tone acquisition.Published versio

Cognitive factors in perception and imitation of Thai tones by Mandarin versus Vietnamese speakers

The thesis investigates how native language phonological and phonetic factors affect non-native lexical tone perception and imitation, and how cognitive factors, such as memory load and stimulus variability (talker and vowel context variability), bias listeners to a phonological versus phonetic mode of perception/imitation. Two perceptual experiments and one imitation experiment were conducted with Thai tones as the stimuli and with Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners, who had no experience with Thai (i.e., naive listeners/imitators). The results of the perceptual experiments (Chapters 5 and 6) showed phonological effects as reflected in assimilation types (Categorised vs. UnCategorised assimilation) and phonetic effects indicated by percent choice and goodness ratings in tone assimilation, largely in line with predictions based on the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995). In addition, phonological assimilation types and phonological overlap of the contrasts affected their discrimination in line with predictions based on PAM. The thesis research has revealed the influence of cognitive factors on native language influences in perception and imitation of non-native lexical tones, which contribute differently to different tasks. The findings carry implications for current non-native speech perception theories. The fact that non-native tone imitation deviations can be traced back to native phonological and phonetic influences on perception supports and provides new insights about perception-production links in processing non-native tones. The findings uphold the extrapolation of PAM and ASP principles to non-native tone perception and imitation, indicating that both native language phonological and phonetic influences and their modulation by cognitive factors hold implications for non-native speech perception/learning theories, as well as for second language instruction

The phonetics of second language learning and bilingualism

This chapter provides an overview of major theories and findings in the field of second language (L2) phonetics and phonology. Four main conceptual frameworks are discussed and compared: the Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2, the Native Language Magnet Theory, the Automatic Selection Perception Model, and the Speech Learning Model. These frameworks differ in terms of their empirical focus, including the type of learner (e.g., beginner vs. advanced) and target modality (e.g., perception vs. production), and in terms of their theoretical assumptions, such as the basic unit or window of analysis that is relevant (e.g., articulatory gestures, position-specific allophones). Despite the divergences among these theories, three recurring themes emerge from the literature reviewed. First, the learning of a target L2 structure (segment, prosodic pattern, etc.) is influenced by phonetic and/or phonological similarity to structures in the native language (L1). In particular, L1-L2 similarity exists at multiple levels and does not necessarily benefit L2 outcomes. Second, the role played by certain factors, such as acoustic phonetic similarity between close L1 and L2 sounds, changes over the course of learning, such that advanced learners may differ from novice learners with respect to the effect of a specific variable on observed L2 behavior. Third, the connection between L2 perception and production (insofar as the two are hypothesized to be linked) differs significantly from the perception-production links observed in L1 acquisition. In service of elucidating the predictive differences among these theories, this contribution discusses studies that have investigated L2 perception and/or production primarily at a segmental level. In addition to summarizing the areas in which there is broad consensus, the chapter points out a number of questions which remain a source of debate in the field today.https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uHX9K99Bl31vMZNRWL-YmU7O2p1tG2wHhttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1uHX9K99Bl31vMZNRWL-YmU7O2p1tG2wHhttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1uHX9K99Bl31vMZNRWL-YmU7O2p1tG2wHAccepted manuscriptAccepted manuscrip

Effects of variance and input distribution on the training of L2 learners' tone categorization

Recent psycholinguistic findings showed that (a) a multi-modal phonetic training paradigm that encodes visual, interactive information is more effective in training L2 learners' perception of novel categories, (b) decreasing the acoustic variance of a phonetic dimension allows the learners to more effectively shift the perceptual weight towards this dimension, and (c) using an implicit word learning task in which the words are contrasted with different lexical tones improves naïve listeners' categorization of Mandarin Chinese tones. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of video game training, variance manipulation and high variability training in the context of implicit word learning, in which American English speakers without any tone language experience learn four Mandarin Chinese tones by playing a video game. A video game was created in which each of four different animals is associated with a Chinese tone. The task for the participants is to select each animal's favorite food to feed it. At the beginning of the game, each animal is clearly visible. As the game progresses, the images of the animals become more and more vague and eventually visually indistinguishable. However, the four Chinese tones associated with the animals are played all through the game. Thus, the participants need to depend on the auditory information in order to clear the difficult levels. In terms of the training stimuli, the tone tokens were manipulated to have a greater variance on the pitch height dimension, but a smaller variance on the pitch direction dimension, in order to shift the English listeners' perception to pitch direction, a dimension that native Chinese listeners crucially rely on. A variety of pretests and posttests were used to investigate both the English speakers' perception of the tones and their weighting of the acoustic dimensions. These training stimuli were compared to other types of training stimuli used in the literature, such as the high variability natural stimuli and tones embedded in non-minimal pairs. A group of native English speakers was used as the control group without any tone input. A native control group was also included. The video game training for each speaker consisted of four 30-minute sessions on four different days, and 60 participants (including both the non-native control and native control group) participated in the experiments. The crucial findings in the study include (1) all naïve listeners in the training condition successfully associated lexical tones with different animals without any explicit feedback after only 2 hours of training; (2) both the resynthesized stimuli with smaller variance on pitch direction and the multi-talker stimuli allowed native English speakers to shift their cue-weighting toward pitch direction and the multi-talker stimuli were more robust in terms of shifting the cue-weighting despite their more heterogeneous distribution in the acoustic space; (3) the multi-talker training allowed for better generalization as the trainees in multi-talker training identified the tones produced by new talkers better than trainees in other conditions; (4) there was a main effect of tone on tone identification and the falling tone was the most challenging one; (5) there is a correlation between cue-weighting and the tone discrimination performance before and after the training; (6) due to individual variability, individuals differed in terms of the amount of tone input they received during the video game training and the number of tone tokens was a significant predictor for the sensitivity to tones calculated as d'. Overall, the study showed an effect of talker variability and variances of multidimensional acoustic space on English speakers' cue-weighting for tone perception and their tone categorization

A criterial interlocutor tally for successful talker adaptation?

Part of the remarkable efficiency of listening is accommodation to unfamiliar talkers’ specific pronunciations by retuning of phonemic intercategory boundaries. Such retuning occurs in second (L2) as well as first language (L1); however, recent research with emigrés revealed successful adaptation in the environmental L2 but, unprecedentedly, not in L1 despite continuing L1 use. A possible explanation involving relative exposure to novel talkers is here tested in heritage language users with Mandarin as family L1 and English as environmental language. In English, exposure to an ambiguous sound in disambiguating word contexts prompted the expected adjustment of phonemic boundaries in subsequent categorisation. However, no adjustment occurred in Mandarin, again despite regular use. Participants reported highly asymmetric interlocutor counts in the two languages. We conclude that successful retuning ability requires regular exposure to novel talkers in the language in question, a criterion not met for the emigrés’ or for these heritage users’ L1

High or low? Comparing high and low-variability phonetic training in adult and child second language learners

Background High talker variability (i.e., multiple voices in the input) has been found effective in training nonnative phonetic contrasts in adults. A small number of studies suggest that children also benefit from high-variability phonetic training with some evidence that they show greater learning (more plasticity) than adults given matched input, although results are mixed. However, no study has directly compared the effectiveness of high versus low talker variability in children. Methods Native Greek-speaking eight-year-olds (N = 52), and adults (N = 41) were exposed to the English /i/-/ɪ/ contrast in 10 training sessions through a computerized word-learning game. Pre- and post-training tests examined discrimination of the contrast as well as lexical learning. Participants were randomly assigned to high (four talkers) or low (one talker) variability training conditions. Results Both age groups improved during training, and both improved more while trained with a single talker. Results of a three-interval oddity discrimination test did not show the predicted benefit of high-variability training in either age group. Instead, children showed an effect in the reverse direction—i.e., reliably greater improvements in discrimination following single talker training, even for untrained generalization items, although the result is qualified by (accidental) differences between participant groups at pre-test. Adults showed a numeric advantage for high-variability but were inconsistent with respect to voice and word novelty. In addition, no effect of variability was found for lexical learning. There was no evidence of greater plasticity for phonetic learning in child learners. Discussion This paper adds to the handful of studies demonstrating that, like adults, child learners can improve their discrimination of a phonetic contrast via computerized training. There was no evidence of a benefit of training with multiple talkers, either for discrimination or word learning. The results also do not support the findings of greater plasticity in child learners found in a previous paper (Giannakopoulou, Uther & Ylinen, 2013a). We discuss these results in terms of various differences between training and test tasks used in the current work compared with previous literature

Hakka tone training for native speakers of tonal and nontonal languages

Language learning becomes increasingly difficult when novel linguistic features are introduced. Studies have shown that learners from various language backgrounds can be trained to perceive lexical tone, which assigns meaning to words using variations in pitch. In this thesis, we investigated whether native speakers of tonal Mandarin Chinese and tonal Vietnamese outperformed native speakers of nontonal English when learning Hakka Chinese tones following five sessions of tone training, and whether the complexity (i.e., density) of a listener’s native tone inventory facilitated nonnative tone learning. All groups improved in tone identification and tone word learning following training, with improvements persisting three weeks following the cessation of training. Although both tonal groups outperformed the English group in most tasks, the Mandarin group showed the most consistent advantages over the English group across tasks. Findings suggest that tone experience bolsters tone learning, but density of the tone inventory does not provide an advantage. Confusion patterns offer detailed insight of the interaction between nonnative tones and native tonal and intonational categories

Cross-language speech perception in context : advantages for recent language learners and variation across language-specific acoustic cues

This dissertation explores the relationship between language experience and sensitivity to language-specific segmental cues by comparing cross-language speech perception in monolingual English listeners and Spanish-English bilinguals. The three studies in this project use a novel language categorization task to test language-segment associations in listeners’ first and second languages. Listener sensitivity is compared at two stages of development and across a variety of language backgrounds. These studies provide a more complete analysis of listeners’ language-specific phonological categories than offered in previous work by using word-length stimuli to evaluate segments in phonological contexts and by testing speech perception in listeners’ first language as well as their second language. The inclusion of bilingual children also allows connections to be drawn between previous work on infants’ perception of segments and the sensitivities of bilingual adults. In three experiments, participants categorized nonce words containing different classes of English- and Spanish-specific sounds as sounding more English-like or Spanish-like; target segments were either a phonemic cue, a cue for which there is no analogous sound in the other language, or a phonetic cue, a cue for which English and Spanish share the category but for which each language varies in its phonetic implementation. The results reveal a largely consistent categorization pattern across target segments. Listeners from all groups succeeded and struggled with the same subsets of language-specific segments. The same pattern of results held in a task where more time was given to make categorization decisions. Interestingly, for some segments the late bilinguals were significantly more accurate than monolingual and early bilingual listeners, and this was the case for the English phonemic cues. There were few differences in the sensitivity of monolinguals and early bilinguals to language-specific cues, suggesting that the early bilinguals’ exposure to Spanish did not fundamentally change their representations of English phonology, but neither did their proficiency in Spanish give them an advantage over monolinguals. The comparison of adult listeners with children indicates that the Spanish-speaking children who grow to be early bilingual adults categorize segments more accurately than monolinguals – a pattern that is neutralized in the adult results. These findings suggest that variation in listener sensitivity to language-specific cues is largely driven by inherent differences in the salience of the segments themselves. Listener language experience modulates the salience of some of these sounds, and these differences in cross-language speech perception may reflect how recently a language was learned and under what circumstances.Linguistic

Effects of language experience on pre-categorical perception: Distinguishing general from specialized processes in speech perception

Cross-language differences in speech perception have traditionally been linked to phonological categories, but it has become increasingly clear that language experience has effects beginning at early stages of perception, which blurs the accepted distinctions between general and speech-specific processing. The present experiments explored this distinction by playing stimuli to English and Japanese speakers that manipulated the acoustic form of English /r/ and /l/, in order to determine how acoustically natural and phonologically identifiable a stimulus must be for cross-language discrimination differences to emerge. Discrimination differences were found for stimuli that did not sound subjectively like speech or /r/ and /l/, but overall they were strongly linked to phonological categorization. The results thus support the view that phonological categories are an important source of cross-language differences, but also show that these differences can extend to stimuli that do not clearly sound like speech