Cantonese Learners Research Articles

Examining negative transfer in Cantonese learners of English as a foreign language: an optimality theory approach to English syllable acquisition

Abstract The contrasting differences that exist in the English and Cantonese phonological systems result in divergent articulatory production between them. This article aims to investigate the negative transfer of Cantonese EFL learners in acquiring English consonant clusters and the constraint rankings of Cantonese and English syllable systems by comparing syllable structures and analyzing experimental statistics. The objective is to elucidate the reasons behind their negative transfer in English syllable acquisition. The research results demonstrated that Cantonese EFL learners found it easier to acquire consonant clusters in the onset position compared to the coda position. Additionally, an increase in consonants in the coda position posed greater difficulties for Cantonese EFL learners. The results also indicated that participants encountered the most problems with deletion, followed by substitution and epenthesis. The OT analysis reveals that the different rankings of faithfulness and markedness constraints in Cantonese and English led to transfer errors.

False geminates as an effective transitional strategy for Cantonese learners of Japanese

This article revisits Lee and Mok (2018) and examines how the Cantonese learners in the study produced second language (L2) Japanese short vs. long consonants which are absent in their first language (L1). Specifically, our goal is to find out whether these learners were substituting real geminates (i.e. long consonants) with the improvised strategy of an unreleased stop coda + homorganic initial consonant sequence (like in the phrase cat tail), which would not have been detectable with the durational ratios in the original study. We analysed the mean intensity of the words sassa, sesse, and sosso, to investigate whether the learners were producing a [t̚]+/s/ cluster, presumably drawn from their L1. The results showed that the beginner group were indeed using this strategy, whereas the advanced learners were largely producing a genuinely geminated /s/ akin to the native speakers. The use of this transitional strategy was also speech-rate dependent, with more cases of /t/-insertion in slower speech for both learner groups. We conclude that (1) although having L1 false geminates does not enable beginners to readily acquire genuine L2 geminates, the latter can be learned after enough exposure, and (2) during this transition, Cantonese learners can draw on L1 phonotactic knowledge to improvise creative and effective strategies to attain L2 durational targets.

O efeito de tarefa na produção do ritmo por estudantes cantonenses de português como L2

ABSTRACT This study examines L2 Portuguese speech produced by eight native Cantonese speakers from Macao, China. The aims of this study are to investigate (1) whether the speech rhythm in L2 Portuguese is more source-like (more similar to Cantonese) or more target-like (more similar to Portuguese), and (2) whether L2 speech rhythm differs across three different tasks: a reading task, a retelling task, and an interpreting task. Seven rhythm metrics, i.e., %V, ΔC, ΔV, VarcoC, VarcoV, rPVI_C, and nPVI_V, were adopted for comparison and investigation. The results showed that L2 Portuguese rhythm produced by Cantonese speakers differed from L1 Portuguese speakers’ rhythm. R-deletion and vowel epenthesis were the reasons for the variabilities and instabilities of L2 Portuguese production by Cantonese learners, as they affect the duration and the number of vowel intervals and consonantal intervals. Moreover, in Cantonese learners’ L2 Portuguese production, the semi-spontaneous tasks (retelling and interpreting) presented a significant difference from the reading task. The driving force for such a difference was the cognitive load behind the tasks.

Processing focus in native and non-native speakers of English: an eye-tracking study in the visual world paradigm

AbstractThis “visual-world” eye-tracking study investigated the processing of focus in English sentences with preverbal only by L2 learners whose L1 was either Cantonese or Dutch, compared to native speakers of English. Participants heard only-sentences with prosodic prominence either on the object or on the verb and viewed pictures containing an object-focus alternative and a verb-focus alternative. We found that both L2 groups showed delayed eye movements to the alternative of focus, which was different from the native speakers of English. Moreover, Dutch learners of English were even slower than Cantonese learners of English in directing fixations to the alternative of focus. We interpreted the delayed fixation patterns in both L2 groups as evidence of difficulties in integrating multiple interfaces in real time. Furthermore, the similarity between English and Dutch in the use of prosody to mark focus hindered Dutch learners’ L2 processing of focus, whereas the difference between English and Cantonese in the realization of focus facilitated Cantonese learners’ processing of focus in English.

The effects of metaphonological awareness training on L3 Mandarin tone acquisition by Cantonese learners

ABSTRACT According to the speech learning model [Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 233–277). York Press], learners whose first language (L1) is a tonal language (e.g. Cantonese) can be confused by similar yet different tones in their L1 and another tonal language (e.g. Mandarin). Encouraged by the biliteracy and trilingualism language policy in Hong Kong, L1 Cantonese learners of Mandarin have been committed to learning the third language (L3) Mandarin tones but are struggling with that task. The main purpose of this study is to examine Cantonese learners’ perceptions and production of Mandarin tones, and to investigate learners’ performance in production tasks before and after implementing metaphonological awareness protocols. Twenty-five Cantonese learners studying at a local university were recruited to complete the production, perception and verbal protocol tasks. Based on Wrembel’s [2015. Metaphonologcial awareness in multilinguals: A case of L3 Polish. Language Awareness, 24(1), 60–83. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2014.890209] framework, this study categorised the participants’ statements of metaphonological awareness shown in their self-correction and self-reflection performances in the introspective and retrospective protocols. The error rates and patterns in the production and perception tasks were analysed. Metaphonological awareness training has a significant positive effect on improving learners’ Mandarin tone pronunciation.

COMPREHENSION OF FOCUS-TO-ACCENTUATION MAPPING IN SENTENCES WITHONLYBY ADVANCED CANTONESE LEARNERS AND DUTCH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

AbstractThis study investigates L2 comprehension of focus-to-accentuation mapping in English sentences with focus particleonlyby advanced learners of English whose L1 was either Cantonese or Dutch. Two experiments were conducted to examine (a) whether L2 learners could map accentuation to focus; and (b) whether they could perceive accentuation in English sentences. Results show that accentuation played little role in Cantonese learners’ comprehension of focus, whereas it affected how accurately and quickly Dutch learners and native controls comprehended focus. Dutch learners were even more efficient than native controls in comprehending focus-to-accentuation mapping. Furthermore, both L2 groups could successfully perceive accentuation in English sentences. These findings suggest that multiple interfaces might not be equally problematic for L2 learners with different L1s, and convergence at multiple interfaces in L2 is possible. The comprehension difficulty observed in Cantonese learners can be attributed to their less detailed representation of focus-to-accentuation mapping in L2.

Effects of perceptual training in Mandarin tone sandhi production

It is well-established that the production of non-native lexical tone poses a great challenge to adult L2 learners (Hao,2012; Chang and Yao, 2016; Mok et al., 2018). The production of tonal patterns on disyllabic words is more challenging for non-native speakers because additional computational and/or lexical mechanisms are involved in correctly applying the tone sandhi rules in languages like Mandarin (Chen et al., 2017). Previous speech training studies have shown that perceptual training could improve both perception and production of non-native tones in isolation (Wang et al., 1999, 2003; Wayland and Li, 2008). The current study aims to further examine if perceptual training promotes learning of tonal patterns on disyllabic words by examining the production of two Mandarin Tone sandhi rules—the third tone sandhi and half-third tone sandhi by Cantonese learners. Native Cantonese speakers were trained with an identification task and a same/different discrimination task with both real and wug words. Their pre- and post-training production was compared with native speakers’ production, and it showed that perceptual training can lead to more successful learning of Mandarin tone sandhi rules based on acoustic and statistical analyses of tonal contours.

Designing and implementing a corpus-based online pronunciation learning platform for Cantonese learners of Mandarin

ABSTRACTAs an international financial centre, Hong Kong is a metropolitan city that has given rise to multilingual characteristics in recent years. In addition to Cantonese and English, which serve mostly as first and second languages, Hong Kong residents have increasingly begun to develop a third or even a fourth language. The biliteracy and trilingualism language (兩文三語) policy encourages Mandarin as the third language. This paper introduces a corpus-based online pronunciation learning platform for Mandarin teachers, learners, and researchers to better understand the major problems encountered by Hong Kong learners of Cantonese in learning Mandarin pronunciation. A phonological corpus was established and analysed in order (a) to identify learners’ recurring difficulties in accurately and appropriately using Mandarin segmental and suprasegmental features and (b) to suggest possible solutions to reduce or eliminate such difficulties. The phonological corpus contains recorded data of four spoken tasks (reading of monosyllabic words, reading of multisyllabic words, reading of a passage, and free speech) from Hong Kong Cantonese college students. The phonological annotations of the recordings mainly focus on two areas of segmental features (vowels and consonants), two areas of suprasegmental features (tone and retroflex finals), and mispronunciation. In addition to the corpus, a pronunciation learning website was developed for learners to (a) practice segmental and suprasegmental aspects of pronunciation through a variety of perception and production exercises and (b) discover the possible causes of common Mandarin pronunciation features found in the corpus. Based on the corpus, 40 datasets were analysed, and a checklist of common Mandarin pronunciation errors made by Cantonese learners was made available for teachers and learners. The use and the evaluation of the pronunciation learning platform will also be introduced and discussed.

The Impact of Dialectal Differences on the Perception of Japanese Gemination: A Case Study of Cantonese Learners

The Impact of Dialectal Differences on the Perception of Japanese Gemination: A Case Study of Cantonese Learners

Acquisition of Japanese quantity contrasts by L1 Cantonese speakers

This article explores the acquisition of Japanese vowel and consonant quantity contrasts by Cantonese learners. Our goal is to examine whether transfer from first language (L1) is possible when L1 experience is phonemic but restricted to a small set of sounds (short vs. long vowels) and when the experience is non-phonemic, derived only at morpheme boundaries (short vs. long consonants). We recruited 20 Cantonese learners (beginner and advanced learners) and 5 native speakers of Japanese, who produced target stimuli varying in consonant and vowel quantity framed in a carrier sentence. The resultant data were converted into several durational ratios for analyses. Results showed that both the beginners and advanced learners were able to distinguish between short vs. long vowels and consonants in Japanese, but only the native speakers enhanced the contrasts in slower speech. It was also found that in most cases the learners were able to lengthen the vowel before a geminate (i.e. long consonant), a secondary cue to Japanese consonant quantity known to be rare across languages. These results are discussed in terms of current theories of second language acquisition.

Intonation classification for L2 English speech using multi-distribution deep neural networks

This paper investigates the use of multi-distribution deep neural networks (MD-DNNs) for automatic intonation classification in second-language (L2) English speech. If a classified intonation is different from the target one, we consider that mispronunciation is detected and appropriate diagnostic feedback can be provided thereafter. To transcribe speech data for intonation classification, we propose the RULF labels which are used to transcribe an intonation as rising, upper, lower or falling. These four types of labels can be further merged into two groups – rising and falling. Based on the annotated data from 100 Mandarin and 100 Cantonese learners, we develop an intonation classifier, which considers only 8 frames (i.e., 80 ms) of pitch value prior to the end of the pitch contour over an intonational phrase (IP). This classifier determines the intonation of L2 English speech as either rising or falling with an accuracy of 93.0%.

Transfer of L1 tone knowledge to L2 vowel quantity contrasts as a secondary cue: The case of Cantonese learners of Japanese

Distinguishing vowel quantities in Japanese is problematic for Cantonese-speaking learners. Vowel length is lexically contrastive in Japanese but not in Cantonese. Apart from duration, fundamental frequency (F0) patterns are secondary cues to vowel length distinction. As tone is lexically contrastive in Cantonese (particularly rising vs. high level), learners would likely be able to transfer this phonological knowledge to help themselves acquire vowel length contrast in Japanese. A perception experiment was conducted in which learners listened to Japanese disyllabic words. The first syllable of which was lengthened according to the within-word vowel duration ratio in eight steps. A level or dynamic (rising or falling) F0 pattern was then imposed on the first vowel. Similar to other L2 learners, Cantonese-speaking learners did not perceive the long vs. short contrast categorically, but gradiently. While both dynamic F0 patterns signal a long vowel, they only exploited the rising pattern to recognise a long vowel. Our study suggests that learners have assimilated the falling contour to high level, both of which belong to the same tonal category in Cantonese. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Understanding refusal style and pragmatic competence of teenage Cantonese English learners in refusals: An exploratory study

AbstractThe paper investigates the refusal style of teenage Cantonese learners of English in terms of strategy use, pattern, order, and content of refusals’ semantic formulae quantitatively and qualitatively, and discusses learners’ pragmatic competence and refusal style with reference to that of adult native Mandarin Chinese (L1) speakers and Chinese English learners reported in the literature. One hundred fifty-six Cantonese English learners aged between 14 and 18, studying in Form 2, Form 4, and Form 6, participated in the study. Refusals to requests were collected using five closed role plays in which sociolinguistic variables were controlled. It was found that three indirect refusal patterns were generally used by the three age groups across situations, with the strategy of giving a specific reason being dominant. Only the difference in use of single strategy was statistically significant (

COMMUNICATIVE FOCUS ON FORM AND SECOND LANGUAGE SUPRASEGMENTAL LEARNING

The current study examined how form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) as output enhancement facilitated second language (L2) perception of Mandarin tones at both the phonetic and phonological levels by 41 Cantonese learners of Mandarin. Two experimental groups, FFI only and FFI-CF, received a 90-min FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the categorical distinctions of Mandarin tones through a range of communicative input and output activities. During these activities, the instructors provided CF only to students in the FFI-CF group by recasting and pushing them to repair their mispronunciations of the target features (i.e., output enhancement). The control group received comparable meaning-oriented instruction without any FFI. The effectiveness of FFI was assessed via a forced-choice identification task with both trained and untrained items for a variety of tonal contrasts in Mandarin (high-level Tone 1 vs. mid-rising Tone 2 vs. high-falling Tone 4). According to statistical comparisons, the FFI-only group attained significant improvement in all lexical and tonal contexts, and such effectiveness was evident particularly in the acquisition of Tone 1 and Tone 4—supposedly the most difficult instances due to their identical phonological status in the learners’ first language, Cantonese. The FFI-CF group, however, demonstrated marginally significant gains only under the trained lexical conditions. The results suggest that FFI promotes learners’ attentional shift from vocabulary to sound learning (generalizable gains in trained and untrained items) and facilitates their access to new phonetic and phonological categories. Yet the relative advantage of adding CF to FFI as output enhancement remains unclear, especially with respect to the less experienced L2 learners in the current study.

Difficulty in the acquisition of Mandarin high level and high falling tones by Cantonese learners

Native speakers of tone languages commonly have difficulty discriminating tones with the same phonological function (Huang, 2001), such as Cantonese high level and high falling tones; however, acquisition of such tones with distinctive phonological status in a second language (L2) remains unclear. This study tested 34 Cantonese learners before and after training on Mandarin high level, mid-rising, and high falling tones. Perception was evaluated using a forced-choice identification task, and nine native speakers of Mandarin judged productions from repetition and narrative tasks. Despite improvement in post-tests, perception of high level and high falling tones was found to be more difficult than mid-rising tone in both pre- and post- tests. Misidentification patterns also showed more confusion between high level and high falling tones than other tone pairings, but no effect of training was observed. Compared to the perception results, high falling tone was produced more frequently as high level tone, particularly in the narrative task before and after the training. The results suggest that L2 tone acquisition is complicated by the complex phonological correspondence between L1 and L2 tones. [Research supported by Language Learning Research Grant.]

A preliminary study of the thinking processes and speech act comprehension patterns of Contonese learners of English

Abstract The paper aims to reveal the thinking processes and identify comprehension patterns of three groups of Cantonese learners of English who were secondary students while they were working on a multiple-choice speech act comprehension exercise. The elicited verbal protocols provide significant information for interlanguage pragmatic comprehension and development from the learners.A multiple-choice pragmatic comprehension exercise which consisted of five English direct and indirect speech acts (requests, apologies, refusals, compliments and complaints) in contextualized dialogues was conducted to 156 Cantonese learners of English. They were studying from F2 to F6 of about ages 14 to 18 in three Hong Kong secondary schools during the research period. The comprehension exercise scores showed that the interlanguage pragmatic competence of the three groups of secondary students progressed steadily. The students� verbal protocols exhibited that they were less reliant on literal meaning in interpretation of meaning, and adopted more varied and complex processing strategies from F2 to F6 gradually. The variety and complexity of comprehension strategies and patterns illustrate the characteristic features of the formal representation stage in Bialystok�s cognitive processing model.

Second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by tonal and non-tonal language speakers

This study examines whether second language (L2) learners from tonal and non-tonal first language (L1) backgrounds differ in their perception and production of L2 tones. Ten English-speaking and nine Cantonese-speaking learners participated in Experiment 1, which consisted of the following three tasks: identifying auditory tonal stimuli using Mandarin tonal labels (Identification), mimicking tonal stimuli (Mimicry), and producing tones based upon Mandarin tonal labels (Reading). The results of Experiment 1 showed that the Cantonese group did not perform significantly better than the English group in perceiving and producing Mandarin tones. Both groups had significant difficulty in distinguishing Mandarin Tone 2 (T2) and Tone 3 (T3), and the Cantonese group also had additional trouble distinguishing Mandarin Tone 1 (T1) and Tone 4 (T4). Overall, across the different tasks of Experiment 1 learners had similar accuracy rates and error patterns, indicating comparable tone perception and production abilities. However, learners were significantly better at mimicking tones than at identifying or reading them, suggesting that the major difficulty learners faced in acquiring Mandarin tones was associating pitch contours with discrete tonal labels. This difficulty, however, may be specific to tone acquisition. Seven of the nine Cantonese participants took part in Experiment 2, which assessed their perceptual assimilation of Mandarin tones to Cantonese tones. The results of Experiment 2 helped explain Cantonese learners' T1–T4 confusion by showing that these two tones were mapped onto overlapping Cantonese tonal categories. However, the mapping results would not predict prevailing T2–T3 confusion as observed in Experiment 1, suggesting that this confusion stemmed from factors outside of learners' L1 experience. This study argues that the T2–T3 contrast is hard for L2 learners regardless of their native languages, because of these two tones' acoustic similarity and complex phonological relationship. This suggests that for explaining difficulties in acquisition of certain L2 sounds, factors other than learners' L1 background may also play a significant role.

“Mum, Sister Hit Me”: Interlanguage Complaint Strategies of Cantonese Learners of English from Childhood to Their Teens

The act of complaining takes place in home and institutional settings in many forms every day. However, it is an under-represented speech act compared with the wealth of studies on other speech acts such as requesting, apologising, refusing and responding to compliments. The recent studies on complaint making have concentrated on the discussion about the nature of the act, identification of its communicative features and interlanguage or cross-cultural comparison among adult speakers or second language learners at different proficiency levels. Very little is known about the strategy preferences and realisation patterns of the act made by young and teenage second language learners.This study attempts to provide a fuller picture of how a complaint is realised in an oral-production task by learners of English from childhood to their teens. Based on the transcribed spoken discourse of 176 and 156 young and teenage Cantonese learners of English in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools, it was found that their complaints were moderate in terms of directness and severity. There was a significant decreasing use of direct strategies but a growing sociopragmatic awareness and flexibility in the use of a direct single strategy towards less direct combined strategies according to age and level of study. Pragmalinguistically, the learners used a similar range of intensifiers and softeners. The teenage groups are, however, better at increasing or mitigating the force of the act through the use of supportive moves, descriptions and requesting. The study has demonstrated some evidence for the interlanguage pragmatic development of Cantonese learners of English in the act of complaining.

Suprasegmental features of Chinese‐accented English.

This study compares read speech by Cantonese and Mandarin learners of English with those by native speakers of English. The utterances produced by learners of English are all rated as accented. We aim to identify measurable prosodic differences leading to such perceptual judgment. The prosodic correlates we examine include both syllable duration and pitch values. Our preliminary results reveal in generally mean syllable durations of Cantonese and Mandarins learners are very similar, and much longer than that of the native speakers of English. It is also found that all learners’ production exhibits much greater variations in duration than native speakers. Examination on duration of stressed and unstressed syllables reveals more differences across L1 groups. With regard to pitch correlates, a much wider pitch range is found in the production of native speakers of English than in those of both Mandarin and Cantonese learners of English. Of the Chinese learners, Mandarin group employ a wider pitch range than Cantonese. Moreover, Cantonese learners’ speech is found dominated by a rather “flat” overall pitch contour. We propose that the prosodic deviations in Chinese learners’ English from a native speaker can be accounted for from the perspective of rhythmic and tone system in Chinese.

Strategy and linguistic preference of requests by Cantonese learners of English: An interlanguage and crosscultural comparison

Extending Lee's (2005) work, the researcher further investigates the requestive behaviour of a group of Cantonese learners of English (CLEs) in Hong Kong in terms of their strategy and linguistic preference. The data were collected from a discourse completion test (DCT). Their requestive behaviour is studied in three social and power hierarchical situations (low-high, equal-equal and high-low) in the university context and is compared with a group of native Cantonese speakers' (NCSs) and native English speakers' (NESs) requestive behaviour, respectively. The dual comparison results in three important findings. First, the evidence shows some L1 influence on the syntactic structure of the CLEs' query preparatory strategy. The equivalent interrogative form of (Nei 1 / Ngo5) ho2 ji5/h2 m ho2 ji5: (you/I) can/can-not-can in Cantonese and Can/Could/May you/I ...? in English contributes to the frequent use of the CLEs' indirect requestive behaviour in English. Nevertheless, the difference in direct and indirect strategies between the two groups is significant (p < 0.005). Second, there is cross-cultural agreement on indirect requestive behaviour in the three situations between the CLEs and the NESs. Both groups use the politeness marker of cing2 or please to mitigate imposition and increase politeness. However, the CLEs demonstrate limited pragmalinguistic resources to enhance the force and politeness of the speech act compared to the NESs. The strengths and weaknesses of CLEs' requestive behaviour, their limited pragmalinguistic resources and the limitations of the study are discussed.