Abstract

Native speakers of tone languages commonly have difficulty discriminating tones with the same phonological function (Huang, 2001), such as Cantonese high level and high falling tones; however, acquisition of such tones with distinctive phonological status in a second language (L2) remains unclear. This study tested 34 Cantonese learners before and after training on Mandarin high level, mid-rising, and high falling tones. Perception was evaluated using a forced-choice identification task, and nine native speakers of Mandarin judged productions from repetition and narrative tasks. Despite improvement in post-tests, perception of high level and high falling tones was found to be more difficult than mid-rising tone in both pre- and post- tests. Misidentification patterns also showed more confusion between high level and high falling tones than other tone pairings, but no effect of training was observed. Compared to the perception results, high falling tone was produced more frequently as high level tone, particularly in the narrative task before and after the training. The results suggest that L2 tone acquisition is complicated by the complex phonological correspondence between L1 and L2 tones. [Research supported by Language Learning Research Grant.]

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