Native Mandarin Speakers Research Articles

Comprehension of conversational implicatures in L3 Mandarin

Abstract The current research is an extension and partial replication of Köylü (2018. Comprehension of conversational implicatures in L2 English. Intercultural Pragmatics 15(3). 373–408.) and it investigates the development of conversational implicatures in third language (L3) Mandarin. More specifically, this study explores whether learners with a first language (L1) Cantonese and second language (L2) English background are able to comprehend implied meaning in L3 Mandarin. 14 L1 Cantonese L2 English L3 Mandarin participants with a high intermediate level of Mandarin proficiency took part in the study. There was also a control group of 11 native speakers of Mandarin. Quantitative results based on a 20-item audiovisual interpretation task demonstrate that the L3 learners of Mandarin were not on a par with native speakers of Mandarin in arriving at an intended implicature for the test items. A qualitative analysis of learner responses indicates that the learners’ interpretation of conversational implicatures in L3 Mandarin, although usually successful, was also characterized by repetitions, literal comprehension, and recognition of a gap between the literal and the implied meaning, as well as unintended implicatures.

Cross- and Within-Language Associations Between Phonological, Lexical, and Grammatical Domains in Mandarin-English Bilingual Preschoolers in Singapore.

This study aims to examine the associations of phonological, lexical, and grammatical skills within and between languages in Mandarin-English bilingual preschoolers. Sixty-three Singaporean Mandarin-English bilingual children aged 3-5 years were assessed for articulation, receptive vocabulary, and receptive grammar using standardized instruments in English and compatible tools in Mandarin. Regression analyses were performed on each language outcome, with other language variables as predictors, controlling for age, nonverbal working memory, and home language environment. Phonological and grammatical skills in one language predicted corresponding skills in the other. Phonemes shared across languages showed higher accuracy rates compared to unshared phonemes, while accuracy varied across grammatical structures. Vocabulary did not correlate between languages. It was influenced by household language distribution, with Mandarin vocabulary also correlating with nonverbal working memory. Mandarin grammar positively correlated with the number of native Mandarin speakers at home. Within each language, phonological skills were predicted by vocabulary, while vocabulary and grammar were reciprocally predictive. Cross-language, cross-domain relationships were weak. This study shows domain-specific cross-language associations and language-specific cross-domain associations in Mandarin-English bilingual children, indicating both interdependent and autonomous development. Our findings call for approaches that value the child's full linguistic repertoire and utilize interconnectedness between languages and language domains to enhance bi/multilingual competence. They also highlight the importance of assessing each of the child's languages and considering individual bilingual profiles in research on bilingual language development. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.28200128.

When a rise is not only a rise: An acoustic analysis of the impressionistic distinction between northern and central Taiwan Mandarin using Tone 1 as an example

Abstract This study looked at the realization of the high-level Tone 1 in Taiwan Mandarin to examine a public impression of the central dialect, which is said to have a tendency to end with a rise. Fifty-three Mandarin native speakers (27 northern and 26 central) were recruited. Half performed a reading task and half a word-guessing task on 24 disyllabic words with Tone 1 embedded. Results showed rising realizations were the most prominent for the tone, regardless of dialect, gender, genre, and syllable position, but were more prevalent among females than males, and more common and enlarged in the final than the non-final position. Dialectal differences were twofold and mainly lay in the acoustic realization. Central speakers showed both a lower pitch register and a steeper declination than their northern counterparts, and central females also demonstrated an upstep in the final position of the word-guessing task, which completely annihilated the effect of the downtrend. This implies the impressionistic tendency to end high indeed exists in the Tone 1 of the central variety, but its percept is not based on rising realizations alone. Instead, it stands out as a dialectal feature via an enlargement of the rise in the foreground against a disruption of the downward trend in the background. The female lead in the realization suggests the rising Tone 1 does not come with a negative connotation. Perceptual tolerance for the variant likely stemmed from a long-standing free variation between high-level and high-rise for the tone.

Tip-of-the-pen states in Mandarin handwriting: The effect of brief non-target language exposure.

The tip-of-the-pen (TOP) is a phenomenon in which individuals fail to completely retrieve the orthographic information of a known character, and mainly occurs in Mandarin (a non-alphabetic language in which the orthography is largely independent of the phonology). The present study examined whether and how long-term language experience and brief exposure to non-target language affected TOP rates in Mandarin handwriting. In Experiment 1, high and low proficiency Mandarin-English bilinguals completed a Mandarin character dictation task before and after watching a short English movie. The results revealed similar increases in TOP rates for both groups following the English movie. In Experiment 2, Cantonese-Mandarin bidialectals and native Mandarin speakers completed a protocol similar to Experiment 1, but the movie was replaced with a Cantonese movie. Notably, TOP rates significantly increased for bidialectals after the Cantonese movie, but the rates of incorrect responses increased for native speakers. These findings suggest that brief exposure to non-target language exerted a non-item-specific, global interference effect in written production, and also imply that the underlying mechanisms may be modulated by non-target language familiarity.

Data from role plays and elicited conversations: What do they show about L2 interactional competence?

In research on second language (L2) interactional competence (IC), data elicitation is commonly done either through role plays or elicited conversation tasks. It is unclear, however, what aspects of IC these two methods make visible, where they elicit similar or different data and which research questions they are most suited to answer. In the current study we compare performances in role play tasks with those in elicited conversation tasks from 54 learners of L2 Mandarin Chinese and 12 native Mandarin Chinese speakers. Using conversation analysis to analyze learners’ performance, we found that role plays were highly suitable for making visible the sequential and linguistic tools interactants deploy for preference organization. Elicited conversation was useful for making topic management visible, including topic extension and topic shift. While role plays also included features of topic management and elicited conversations included features of preference organization, these did not occur with sufficient frequency and elaboration to allow defensible conclusions to be drawn. We suggest that role plays and elicited conversations can supplement each other to provide a well rounded picture of interactants’ IC.

The Prosodic Role in English Production of Native Mandarin Children: A Systematic Review Proposal

English, as the most widely used language globally, is increasingly valued by parents and educators. In China, a growing number of children choose English as their second language for learning after being able to use Mandarin relatively proficiently. Mandarin speakers, learning English may face many challenges, one of which is that native Mandarin speakers find it difficult to speak English naturally like native English speakers. Some scholars believe that the disparity in prosodic features between Mandarin and English is one of the key factors causing this difficulty. Compared to adult learners, children have an unstable prosodic development system, resulting in significant differences in language acquisition. Therefore, understanding the relationship between the prosodic features of Mandarin-speaking children and their English production is crucial. From the perspective of structure and purpose, this paper Outlines a systematic literature review framework, hoping to summarize the previous articles on the role of prosody in the English production of Mandarin speaking children, and provide some useful results that can help people in this field to improve their work. From the perspective of content, in this systematic literature review, we are going to propose and solve two questions: (1) Does the prosody of Mandarin influence Mandarin-speaking children’s English production? (2) If the influences do exist, what are the specific influences? To solve these two questions, we first search some articles with the searching strategies that we design. Then we plan to screen the articles that we get from searching with the inclusion criteria and the exclusion criteria that we design. Finally, we plan to use quantitative analysis to analyze these samples and give the eventual result.

Acoustic changes in consonants produced with a facemask

The widespread use of surgical facemasks in the post COVID-19 era has raised concerns about their impact on speech communication. As many previous studies focused only on vowel production, the present study aims to explore how surgical mask affects production of consonants. Four stops (/pʰ, p, tʰ, t/) and three fricatives (/s, ɕ, f/) produced by 61 adults (31 males and 30 females) who were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were obtained. Spectral moment and other acoustic measures including Centre of Gravity (CoG), Standard Deviation (SD), skewness, and kurtosis, and spectral peak, duration, and voice onset time (VOT) were analyzed by using Praat software. Preliminary findings indicated higher CoG values, lower SD, skewness, and kurtosis, and VOT when wearing a facemask. A repeated-measures ANOVA revealed significant effects of facemasks on acoustic features, suggesting that facemasks tended to alter the acoustic properties associated with Mandarin consonants, potentially reducing speech intelligibility.

Representing Tone in Onomatopoeic Expressions

My research seeks to clarify what specific acoustic properties that humans use to represent sounds in onomatopoeia, in the specific domain of tone. A wealth of research (Tanaka et al. 1995, Yamauchi et al. 2003, Yamauchi and Iwamiya 2005, and Matsui 2020, etc.) has find that, when representing pure tones as onomatopoeia, native Japanese speakers will use F2 as a proxy for f0. This has also been found to be true of native Mandarin speakers (Matsui 2020). Yet, it has not been determined whether this is also true of speakers of a non-tonal langauge, like English, and whether this association is one sided. My ongoing study will be conducted on 30 native English speakers and 30 native Mandarin speakers. In the first part, which reuses the methodology of existing research, participants will be asked to listen to pure tones of 62.5, 125, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, and 8000 Hz and represent them as an onomatopoeia. In the second part, which will be administered only to Mandarin speakers, participants will undergo a 2-AFC task where they must categorize tokens from a tonal minimal pair. All of the tokens have been high-pass filtered to obscure tone and have F2 altered to be higher or lower than normal. Preliminary results indicate that English speakers do use F2 as a proxy for f0.

Effects of Homophone Priming on the Decision-Making in Perceptual Color Recognition of Mandarin Speakers

This study delves into the nuanced interactions between language, cognition, and perception by examining the impact of homophones on decision-making and perceptual color recognition among native Mandarin speakers. Drawing on theories of linguistic relativity and cognitive processing, this research hypothesized that homophonic primes would subtly influence both decision-making processes and color recognition tasks. Participants were assigned at random to surveys where they were unknowingly exposed to stimuli with and without homophonic primes before engaging in color recognition tasks involving subtle shade differentiations. Contrary to initial expectations, statistical analysis revealed no significant differences in decision-making accuracy between conditions, suggesting that homophones may not overtly affect conscious decision-making processes in our bilingual cohort. However, intriguing variations emerged in the perceptual color recognition task, where participants exposed to homophonic primes showed tendencies to perceive color shades more similarly compared to those in the control condition. This finding implies a potential cognitive load effect or subtle priming influence on perceptual categorization tied to linguistic structures. The implications of these findings challenge traditional views on language's role in shaping cognitive processes, highlighting the complexity of how linguistic structures such as homophones may operate at subconscious levels. The study contributes to ongoing debates in cognitive science and linguistics by underscoring the need for nuanced approaches to understanding cross-linguistic cognitive mechanisms. Future research should further explore the Whorfian hypothesis within bilingual contexts, considering additional variables such as language proficiency and cultural influences to elucidate the intricate relationship between language and cognition.

Cluster Level Inferences in Bilingual Resting State fMRI Dataset

Bilingualism is a skill that I can bring from childhood to adulthood. Few studies have been done on the brain structure of these people so far. In this article, with 56 resting state fMRI dataset including 28 subjects were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese living in the United States and the second 28 subjects were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese who lived in China, brain volume clusters were found for these people with p-FDR < 0.005 using the conn software. Each cluster compared to a known distribution of expected cluster sizes under the null hypothesis. at the end we got 8 cluster in compression group bilingual> control group.

Structural and sequential regularities modulate phrase-rate neural tracking

Electrophysiological brain activity has been shown to synchronize with the quasi-regular repetition of grammatical phrases in connected speech—so-called phrase-rate neural tracking. Current debate centers around whether this phenomenon is best explained in terms of the syntactic properties of phrases or in terms of syntax-external information, such as the sequential repetition of parts of speech. As these two factors were confounded in previous studies, much of the literature is compatible with both accounts. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to determine if and when the brain is sensitive to both types of information. Twenty native speakers of Mandarin Chinese listened to isochronously presented streams of monosyllabic words, which contained either grammatical two-word phrases (e.g., catch fish, sell house) or non-grammatical word combinations (e.g., full lend, bread far). Within the grammatical conditions, we varied two structural factors: the position of the head of each phrase and the type of attachment. Within the non-grammatical conditions, we varied the consistency with which parts of speech were repeated. Tracking was quantified through evoked power and inter-trial phase coherence, both derived from the frequency-domain representation of EEG responses. As expected, neural tracking at the phrase rate was stronger in grammatical sequences than in non-grammatical sequences without syntactic structure. Moreover, it was modulated by both attachment type and head position, revealing the structure-sensitivity of phrase-rate tracking. We additionally found that the brain tracks the repetition of parts of speech in non-grammatical sequences. These data provide an integrative perspective on the current debate about neural tracking effects, revealing that the brain utilizes regularities computed over multiple levels of linguistic representation in guiding rhythmic computation.

How does a structurally similar background language influence L3 grammars? A study on the syntax of L2/L3 Mandarin [SI 21/3]

ABSTRACT This article reports on an empirical study of L3 Mandarin, aiming to shed light on transfer effects and their interaction with other factors throughout the L3 acquisition trajectory. A fill-in-the-blank task was employed to examine L2 and L3 acquisition of three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters. Participants in the study were Mandarin native speakers, L1 English-L2 Mandarin speakers, L1 English-L2 Cantonese-L3 Mandarin speakers, and L1 Cantonese-L2 English-L3 Mandarin speakers at low and high Mandarin proficiency levels. Our data support arguments in the L3 literature that transfer at the L3 initial stages is from a structurally more similar language. Facilitation takes place when the instantiation of the target property in the L3 is exactly the same as that in the transfer source language. Overall typological similarity might be helpful when transfer is from the L1, but it does not always facilitate the L3 acquisition of individual properties. For later L3 development, construction frequency and mapping paradigms have a great impact on the acquisition outcome. Moreover, a certain kind of non-facilitative transfer from an L1 is found to persist in L3 Mandarin grammars, which qualitatively supports the Cumulative Input Threshold Hypothesis.

Acoustic Analyses of L1 and L2 Vowel Interactions in Mandarin–Cantonese Late Bilinguals

While the focus of bilingual research is frequently on simultaneous or early bilingualism, the interactions between late bilinguals’ first language (L1) and second language (L2) have rarely been studied previously. To fill this research gap, the aim of the current study was to investigate the production of vowels in the L1 Mandarin and L2 Cantonese of Mandarin–Cantonese late bilinguals in Hong Kong. A production experiment was conducted with 22 Mandarin–Cantonese bilinguals, as well as with 20 native Mandarin speakers and 21 native Cantonese speakers. Acoustic analyses, including formants of and Euclidean distances between the vowels, were performed. Both vowel category assimilation and dissimilation were noted in the Mandarin–Cantonese bilinguals’ L1 and L2 vowel systems, suggesting interactions between the bilinguals’ L1 and L2 vowel categories. In general, the findings are in line with the hypotheses of the Speech Learning Model and its revised version, which state that L1–L2 phonetic interactions are inevitable, as there is a common phonetic space for storing the L1 and L2 phonetic categories, and that learners always have the ability to adapt their phonetic space. Future studies should refine the data elicitation method, increase the sample size and include more language pairs to better understand L1 and L2 phonetic interactions.

Insertional code-switching as interactional resource in Mandarin–English bilingual conversation

Aims and Objectives: This study investigates the interactional relevance of insertional code-switching, that is, insertion of other-language words/phrases, in Mandarin–English bilingual conversation. It focuses on a next speaker’s (dis)alignment with an insertion in an adjacency pair and its import to the ongoing interaction. Methodology: This study adopts the framework of conversation analysis, which seeks to describe the underlying organization of talk-in-interaction. It features analyses warranted by techniques and signals in conversation that are demonstrably relevant to conversation participants. Data and Analysis: The data come from CallFriend Mandarin Corpus. Speakers are native speakers of Mandarin Chinese who resided in the United States at the time of recording. First, all instances of insertional code-switching were extracted with the extended context, filtering out those not occurring in an adjacency pair. Next, sequential analysis was conducted to examine the interactional import of a next speaker’s alignment and disalignment, respectively, when insertional code-switching occurs in an adjacency pair. Findings: This study discovers that a next speaker’s alignment with an insertion is sequentially preferred over disalignment. When different language choice over the same word occurs, speakers orient to it as problematic and then repair it, such that, alignment is achieved. Disalignment is used to claim the current speaker’s more authoritative status in the matter concerned. Originality: A large bulk of literature on insertional code-switching has focused on its syntactic constraints and semantic conditions; its interactional functions in bilingual conversation have not received as much attention. This study reveals that insertional code-switching works as an extra resource for bilingual speakers to achieve interactional alignment. Significance: This study challenges the view that insertional code-switching is not sequentially implicative by showing that it does place sequential constraints on the next speaker. It further argues that such sequential implicativeness can be exploited to establish finely calibrated alignment and index epistemic status.

The Accompanying Effect in Responses to Auditory Perturbations: Unconscious Vocal Adjustments to Unperturbed Parameters.

The present study examined whether participants respond to unperturbed parameters while experiencing specific perturbations in auditory feedback. For instance, we aim to determine if speakers adjust voice loudness when only pitch is artificially altered in auditory feedback. This phenomenon is referred to as the "accompanying effect" in the present study. Thirty native Mandarin speakers were asked to sustain the vowel /ɛ/ for 3 s while their auditory feedback underwent single shifts in one of the three distinct ways: pitch shift (±100 cents; coded as PT), loudness shift (±6 dB; coded as LD), or first formant (F1) shift (±100 Hz; coded as FM). Participants were instructed to ignore the perturbations in their auditory feedback. Response types were categorized based on pitch, loudness, and F1 for each individual trial, such as Popp_Lopp_Fopp indicating opposing responses in all three domains. The accompanying effect appeared 93% of the time. Bayesian Poisson regression models indicate that opposing responses in all three domains (Popp_Lopp_Fopp) were the most prevalent response type across the conditions (PT, LD, and FM). The more frequently used response types exhibited opposing responses and significantly larger response curves than the less frequently used response types. Following responses became more prevalent only when the perturbed stimuli were perceived as voices from someone else (external references), particularly in the FM condition. In terms of isotropy, loudness and F1 tended to change in the same direction rather than loudness and pitch. The presence of the accompanying effect suggests that the motor systems responsible for regulating pitch, loudness, and formants are not entirely independent but rather interconnected to some degree.

THE ROLE OF L1 PROSODY IN L2 VOWEL DURATION PRODUCTION: EVIDENCE FROM ASIAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

The pre-fortis clipping pattern refers to vowels being shorter before voiceless consonants compared to vowels before voiced consonants. This study examined whether first-language (L1) prosodic properties affect the production of this vowel duration pattern in second-language (L2) English speech. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese with varying English proficiency participated in a production experiment. Results showed that while speakers exhibited some pre-fortis clipping, there were no significant vowel lengthening patterns. Additional analysis revealed subtle differences based on the L1 prosody type. Native Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers, with lexical tone, had similar duration ratios. However, native Korean speakers, with no tone, showed less distinction in vowel duration by consonant voicing. Japanese speakers, with pitch accents, fell in the middle. The findings provide limited evidence that L1 prosody affects L2 vowel duration production. The results have implications for theories of L2 speech acquisition as well as pedagogical techniques when teaching English vowels.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0711/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Graded phonological neighborhood effects on lexical retrieval: Evidence from Mandarin Chinese

How phonological neighborhood affects lexical retrieval can shed important light on lexical organization and processing. Yet these effects are unclear, particularly in Mandarin Chinese. This is likely because the working definition of phonological neighbors (i.e., the one-phoneme edit rule) used in Indo-European languages inadequately characterizes the phonological similarity among Mandarin words, which have simpler syllable structures and lexical tones. The current study proposes a graded Mandarin phonological neighborhood and investigates the impacts of near-to-distant Mandarin phonological neighbors on lexical retrieval. In Study 1, we investigated how Mandarin phonological similarity is influenced by the editing of lexical tone, constituent (onset/rime, initial/final) and phoneme. Native Mandarin speakers rated the similarity between the edited monosyllabic words. We found that constituent-edit neighbors were rated as the most dissimilar, followed by phoneme-edit neighbors, while tone-edit neighbors were the most similar. In Study 2, we calculated the constituent-, phoneme- and tone-edit phonological neighborhood densities and frequencies for 4,706 monosyllabic Mandarin words. We then utilized extant datasets to examine how the density and frequency of neighbors at varied distances, as well as of homophonic neighbors, impact response latencies in word naming, visual lexical decision, and picture naming tasks. The results showed that graded phonological neighbors had differential impacts on lexical retrieval efficiency: distant (constituent-edit) neighbors facilitated word retrieval, while near (phoneme-, tone-edit and homophonic) neighbors had inhibitory effects. We discuss these findings within an interactive activation and competition framework and suggest future directions to study the representation and processing of the Mandarin phonological lexicon.

The role of phonology in non-native word learning: Evidence from cross-situational statistical learning

Abstract Adults often encounter difficulty perceiving and processing sounds of a second language (L2). In order to acquire word-meaning mappings, learners need to determine what the language-relevant phonological contrasts are in the language. In this study, we examined the influence of phonology on non-native word learning, determining whether the language-relevant phonological contrasts could be acquired by abstracting over multiple experiences, and whether awareness of these contrasts could be related to learning. We trained English- and Mandarin-native speakers with pseudowords via a cross-situational statistical learning task (CSL). Learners were able to acquire the phonological contrasts across multiple situations, but similar-sounding words (i.e., minimal pairs) were harder to acquire, and words that contrast in a non-native suprasegmental feature (i.e., Mandarin lexical tone) were even harder for English-speakers, even with extended exposure. Furthermore, awareness of the non-native phonology was not found to relate to learning.

Effects of auditory processing ability on the phonological and acoustic processing of Mandarin tone by Thai speakers: An ERP study

This study investigated how Mandarin-naïve Thai speakers’ auditory processing ability affects their phonological and acoustic processing of Mandarin tone. The participants were 20 native Mandarin speakers and 19 Mandarin-naïve Thai speakers. A 10-step computer synthesized Tone 1 (T1)–Tone 2 (T2) continuum was manipulated for identification task. The stimulus 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 from the T1–T2 continuum were used in a multi-feature passive oddball ERP paradigm, encompassing within-category and across-category stimuli with equivalent large-scale and small-scale acoustic intervals. We used pitch discrimination, melody reproduction, and rhythm reproduction to assess participants’ auditory processing ability. The identification results showed that Mandarin-naïve Thai speakers’ exhibit a weaker categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin tones compared to the native Mandarin speakers, a pattern consistent with ERP results observed at both sensor and source levels. Further analysis revealed higher auditory processing ability leads to enhanced CP of Mandarin tone for learners from Thai, and the same improvement is observed in the melody memory for acoustic processing of Mandarin tone. These findings add to our understanding on how individual differences influence phonological and acoustic processing of Mandarin tone during the initial stage of second speech learning.

Lexical encoding of second language tones in English learners of Mandarin

The study investigates how native and non-native differences in tone perception influence lexical encoding of second language (L2) tones. Previous work shows that tone language listeners perceived tones as phonemic categories while non-tone language listeners relied more on psychoacoustic cues such as pitch height to discriminate stimulus tones. However, little is known about the influence of such differences in perception on L2 tonal encoding. In the present study, two experiments were conducted with nineteen English learners of Mandarin and 20 Mandarin native speakers. Experiment 1 was an ABX task. Results showed that while native speakers’ overall performance was superior to L2 listeners’, both groups poorly discriminated tone pairs with shared tone contours (i.e., T2-T3). Experiment 2 was a medium-lag repetition priming task. In the repetition condition, significant facilitations were observed in both language groups. In the minimal-tone-pair condition, despite T2-T3 contrasts posing greater challenge for both groups to accurately distinguish than other tonal contrasts as shown in Experiment 1, positive priming was observed only in the L2 group. The findings from the two experiments suggest that the L2 listeners, although quite proficient in Mandarin, have yet to achieve native-like competence in regard to lexical tones.