Perception of English narrow and broad focus by native speakers of Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the ability to accurately perceive and comprehend English intonation patterns among native Mandarin speakers. Intonation patterns are patterns of rising and falling in pitch over the course of a full utterance. Both English and Mandarin make use of intonation patterns. However, unlike English, Mandarin is a tonal language in which pitch changes served to distinguish word meaning. The tonal patterns of words thus cause additional pitch fluctuation in the overall intonation of a Mandarin sentence. Sixteen Mandarin and 12 English speakers participated in the study. In the first task, participants were asked to listen to English sentences with either a falling or a rising intonation, and to decide whether the sentence is complete or incomplete. Participants’ comprehension of English sentences produced with an intonation pattern focused on the verb, the noun or the entire sentence was examined. The results obtained indicated that (a) native speakers of English outperformed native Mandarin speakers on both tasks, that (b) both groups performed better on the second task, and that (c) the difference between the two tasks was greater among Mandarin speakers than among English speakers.