Influence of L1 Background on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones by Russian and Vietnamese Listeners

Qiongqiong Zou

doi:10.5539/ijel.v9n4p275

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of L1 background on categorical perception of lexical tones by three language groups, namely native Mandarin, Russian and Vietnamese listeners. Tone identification and discrimination scores of two tone continua (T1-T2 and T1-T4) were measured for each participant. Results showed that the two tone language groups, i.e., Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners, perceived both tone continua categorically whereas the non-tone language group, i.e., Russian listeners, did not. More specifically, while the Russian group exhibited significantly broader identification boundaries and performed near chance level in discrimination tasks, the Mandarin and Vietnamese groups presented sharp slopes in identification curves and corresponding discrimination peaks at the cross-boundary positions. Moreover, Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners showed slightly different discrimination curves, which could be attributed to the effect of their different tone inventories. The current findings suggest that native tone language background, to some extent, can facilitate non-native tone perception.

Highlights

Languages in the world can be generally divided into tone and non-tone languages, which differ in the use of pitch (fundamental frequency (F0) as its acoustic correlate) in their prosodic systems (Yip, 2002)
This study investigated the influence of L1 background on categorical perception of lexical tones by three language groups, namely native Mandarin, Russian and Vietnamese listeners
The identification curves for Russian listeners just exhibited gentle slopes and their discrimination peak did not correspond with the category boundary, suggesting that the Russian group perceived Mandarin Tone 1 and Tone 2 in a continuous manner

Summary

Introduction

Languages in the world can be generally divided into tone and non-tone languages, which differ in the use of pitch (fundamental frequency (F0) as its acoustic correlate) in their prosodic systems (Yip, 2002). Pitch can be used at the word, phrase, or sentence level (intonation) in these non-tone languages to cover various communication intentions (So & Best, 2014). Since these two broad language types diverge in the use of pitch information, previous studies have revealed that pitch variation in a tone language, i.e., tone contrasts, are perceived differently by tone and non-tone language listeners and that listeners tend to make use of their native language prosodic systems when perceiving pitch variations in a non-native language (Huang & Johnson, 2010; So & Best, 2010; Sun & Huang, 2012; Wang, 2013; Wayland & Guion, 2003). There exists another point of view that native tone and non-tone language speakers did not differ significantly in the perceptual accuracy of L2 tones (Francis, Ciocca, Ma, & Fenn, 2008; Hao, 2012)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion