Vowel Space in Mandarin-Accented English

Abstract

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to expand on the earlier work of Chen et al. (2001a) by comparing the acoustic vowel spaces for speakers of Mandarin-accented English (MAE) and speakers of American English (AE). Three vowels that are phonetically equivalent in both the Mandarin and English languages (/i, u, /) and three AE vowels not found in the Mandarin language (/I, , /) were acoustically measured for the first formant (F1) and second formant (F2) frequencies. On the basis of F1 versus F2 plots, estimates of acoustic vowel space were made for MAE and AE speakers. It was hypothesized that AE and MAE speakers would show no differences in vowel space area for production of equivalent vowels; however, vowel space area would differ significantly for production of nonequivalent vowels. Results obtained for speakers of MAE indicated a significantly smaller vowel space area for the vowels /i, u, / compared to AE speakers. On the other hand, the vowels /I, , /were produced by the MAE speakers with a signif...