Mandarin Speakers' Acquisitions and Representations of Flapping in American English in An ESL Context: A Perception and Production Study

Abstract

Previous discussion about perception and production of flapping in American English mostly centers on native speakers' exploration. The present study offers a new insight into flapping in American English learners. To investigate American-English-trained Taiwan ESL learners' perception and production of [ſ], two experiments were conducted, with completely different subjects. English major (Linguistically-trained) and non-English major college students were invited to the experiments: (1) In the production experiment, both subject groups would read 14 high-frequency words (7 with /t/ and 7 with /d/), whereby word-medial flapping was acceptable, two times in random order. (2) The perception test explored the sensitivity of [ſ] identification. English major students were asked to present phonetic transcriptions while those non-English majors judged that the recordings sounded more [t]-alike or [d]-alike. Results showed more occurrence of flapping laid on English major students but they could have perceptual confusion over [d, ſ] contrast. Hypercorrection, where [ſ] might be pronounced as [d] to seek audio resemblance, was also found in English maj ors. The study generally implicated [ſ] could be well pronounced by Mandarin speakers under more exposure to English and linguistic training. The overall findings can enlighten English pronunciation education in ESL contexts and potentially help ameliorate Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) on non-English-native users' interfaces.