Abstract
Crosslinguistic comparison of VOT has indicated linguistic transfer of voicing and aspiration contrasts in many languages. Mandarin has clear aspiration contrasts for voiceless stops, while Min presents another complicated VOT pattern, where voicing and aspiration contrasts are involved. The present study makes a crosslinguistic comparison between languages with voicing and aspiration contrasts as well as the potential linguistic transfer of VOT in English contexts from Mandarin and Min. There are three subject groups, including American English natives and Mandarin-Min bilinguals with different levels of Min-fluency. Mandarin-Min bilinguals have more aspirations for aspirated voiceless stops than English natives. They also present two surfaces for English underlying voiced stops, voiced and unaspirated voiceless. Different levels of Min fluency are found to influence the tendencies towards voiced or unaspirated voiceless representations of English voiced stops. The overall finding presents a clear crosslinguistic influence on VOT patterns.
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