Tone Acquisition Research Articles

Multimodal cues in L2 lexical tone acquisition: current research and future directions

This review discusses the effectiveness of visual and haptic cues for second language (L2) lexical tone acquisition, with a special focus on observation and production of hand gestures. It explains how these cues can facilitate initial acquisition of L2 lexical tones via multimodal depictions of pitch. In doing so, it provides recommendations for incorporation of multimodal cues into L2 lexical tone pedagogy.

Enhancing tonal‐language learning through music: A review of experimental methods and melodic intonation therapy influences

AbstractThis literature review explores the impact of music on tonal language learning, with a focus on Mandarin Chinese. Utilising searches across major databases such as ERIC (EBSCO), ProQuest Central, Google Scholar, and Web of Science from 2005 to 2024, we selected relevant peer‐reviewed English‐language articles examining music's role in aiding tone acquisition and related cognitive processes. From 30 publications, findings are categorised into theoretical relationships, cognitive effects, melodic intonation therapy (MIT) applications and digital music applications. Theoretical frameworks emphasise the correlation between musicality and language proficiency, highlighting musicians' enhanced tonal perception and production skills. Cognitive effects include music's influence on pronunciation, memory and cultural understanding. MIT's effectiveness in tonal language learning is then discussed, emphasising its potential to improve cortical representations of tone categories. Finally, digital music applications are examined, focusing on language learning apps incorporating music for personalised and engaging learning experiences. The review finds significant literature reporting that music‐based methodologies, aligned with experiential learning paradigms, hold significant potential in Mandarin Chinese acquisition. They enhance listening comprehension, spoken language production, and understanding of grammar and syntax. Similar to MIT principles, music‐assisted tonal language learning utilises exaggerated melody and rhythm to improve language production, especially with complex words. This review is motivated by the recognition of music's potential benefits in language education, especially for tonal languages. It aims to provide educators and researchers with insights into effective methods and applications, guiding instructional practices and stimulating further empirical investigations in this interdisciplinary field. Ultimately, it contributes to the ongoing discourse on optimising tonal language learning methodologies.

Shadowing textbook and authentic materials in beginning L2 learners’ acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones in spontaneous speech

Abstract Addressing the lack of research examining the use of discourse-level speech input in beginning L2 learners’ Mandarin tone production in spontaneous speech, this study compares the effects of authentic videos and textbook audios as shadowing materials on beginners’ multisyllabic tone production in spontaneous speech and learner attitudes. Fourteen college students, randomly divided into the “authentic” and “textbook” groups, shadowed for four weeks. From the pretest to the posttest, both groups significantly improved tone accuracy in sentence-level spontaneous speech with no significant differences between groups. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of learners’ responses show that (1) both groups had positive attitudes toward the materials, (2) authentic materials generated greater interest, and learners appreciated shadowing authentic conversations or conversations that mimic natural discourse, and (3) the learners primarily cared about whether the materials were comprehensible, interesting, and accessible. The findings shed light on using authentic materials to teach L2 pronunciation.

A Review and Prospect of Corporate Text Information Tone Management

With the development of society and technological progress, on the one hand, the academic and practical circles are paying more attention to the text information such as the non-financial report of enterprises. On the other hand, the progress of computer technology has made it possible to obtain and quantify text information. Tone is one of the important characteristics of text information, which refers to the positive or negative emotional tendencies while disclosing text information. Enterprises manipulate text messages for profit through tone management, which has certain economic consequences. This paper systematically reviews the acquisition and measurement methods of text information tone, and reviews the existing literature on the influence factors and economic consequences of tone management, so as to provide direction and reference for future research on text information and tone management.

A Review of Research on The Neural Mechanisms of Lexical Tone Acquisition

The phenomenon of bilingualism is becoming more and more important as international communication becomes closer and closer. In the past, linguists' studies on second language acquisition by bilinguals seldom dealt with the language processing mechanism of the human brain itself, but the further development of science and technology has made it possible to quantify the laws of language learning at the neural level. In this paper, the author reviews the literature on the brain-neural mechanisms of tone perception in the primary stage of bilinguals from the perspectives of native language and bilingual tone perception in light of the previous research results. At present, the main research methods adopted in the study of tone acquisition are phonological experimental research and listening and dialectic research. However, the research on tone perception mostly focuses on differentiation and recognition experiments, the use of neuroscience technology is still insufficient, and the combination between disciplines is not close enough.

Acquisition of Mandarin tones by Canadian first graders: Effect of prior exposure to tonal and non-tonal languages.

This study examines the tone productions of school-aged children with and without a tonal language background who are learning Mandarin as a second language (L2) or heritage language in Mandarin-English bilingual schools in Western Canada. Tones are frequently identified as one of the most challenging aspects of phonology for Mandarin L2 learners to acquire. In this study, tone productions of bilingual children from three home language backgrounds, English, Cantonese, and Mandarin Chinese, were compared for transcribed accuracy using mixed effects logistic regression. In addition, the fundamental frequency contours of correct tone productions were fitted with generalized additive mixed models to analyse the acoustic differences between groups. Error patterns were also analysed for possible Cantonese substitutions. Our results suggest that children with a Cantonese background are more accurate in tone productions than children with an English language background, but they also made more errors than their peers with a Mandarin language background. These findings suggest that a tonal language background could result in positive transfer among school-age children who are in the early stages of learning Mandarin as an L2.

Assessing Speech Production in Mandarin–English Bilingual Children: Comparison of Mandarin and English Sound Systems and Special Considerations

Purpose:When assessing bilingual children's speech, it is important to determine whether the errors are indicative of a true speech sound disorder or a speech sound difference. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide cultural and linguistic background of Mandarin in comparison to English and to outline the process of speech production assessment for Mandarin–English bilingual children.Method:Pertinent literature was reviewed around varieties of Chinese, unique features of the Mandarin sound system, commonly used transcription methods (International Phonetic Alphabet andPinyin), and patterns of Mandarin-influenced English. Previous research findings on the acquisition of consonants, vowels, and tones in monolingual Mandarin-speaking children were summarized.Results:The assessment process including consonants, vowels, tones, syllable structures, and lexical stress was described and illustrated with flow charts. Recourses related to cultural and linguistic information of Mandarin and accessible assessment materials are referenced.Conclusions:A thorough knowledge of a child's language background is crucial in planning assessment of speech production for Mandarin–English bilingual children. A comparative understanding of the sound systems of Mandarin and English facilitates clinical decision making.

The development of tone discrimination in infancy: Evidence from a cross-linguistic, multi-lab report.

We report the findings of a multi-language and multi-lab investigation of young infants' ability to discriminate lexical tones as a function of their native language, age and language experience, as well as of tone properties. Given the high prevalence of lexical tones across human languages, understanding lexical tone acquisition is fundamental for comprehensive theories of language learning. While there are some similarities between the developmental course of lexical tone perception and that of vowels and consonants, findings for lexical tones tend to vary greatly across different laboratories. To reconcile these differences and to assess the developmental trajectory of native and non-native perception of tone contrasts, this study employed a single experimental paradigm with the same two pairs of Cantonese tone contrasts (perceptually similar vs. distinct) across 13 laboratories in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North-America testing 5-, 10- and 17-month-old monolingual (tone, pitch-accent, non-tone) and bilingual (tone/non-tone, non-tone/non-tone) infants. Across the age range and language backgrounds, infants who were not exposed to Cantonese showed robust discrimination of the two non-native lexical tone contrasts. Contrary to this overall finding, the statistical model assessing native discrimination by Cantonese-learning infants failed to yield significant effects. These findings indicate that lexical tone sensitivity is maintained from 5 to 17 months in infants acquiring tone and non-tone languages, challenging the generalisability of the existing theoretical accounts of perceptual narrowing in the first months of life. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This is a multi-language and multi-lab investigation of young infants' ability to discriminate lexical tones. This study included data from 13 laboratories testing 5-, 10-, and 17-month-old monolingual (tone, pitch-accent, non-tone) and bilingual (tone/non-tone, non-tone/non-tone) infants. Overall, infants discriminated a perceptually similar and a distinct non-native tone contrast, although there was no evidence of a native tone-language advantage in discrimination. These results demonstrate maintenance of tone discrimination throughout development.

Effects of Synthesized Inflectional Tones on the Perception of Mandarin Third Tone by Native Chinese Speakers and Korean L2 Learners

This study investigated how Chinese Tone 3 (T3) was perceived by native speakers and L2 learners. In the current experiment, participants included 20 Chinese speakers and 20 advanced-level Korean L2 learners. The stimuli were 13 flectional tones with different ending pitch values (categorized as 211, 212, 213, 214, and 215), synthesized by Praat. Results indicated that the tone with a pitch value of 211 was most commonly perceived as T3, while other tones were mostly perceived as T2 (mid-rising tone). Both native Chinese speakers and the Korean L2 learners with over five years of Chinese learning tended to perceive 211 as T3, suggesting their sensitivity to pitch changes and contour cues. In addition, the Korean L2 learners relied more on the ending pitch value, with higher values leading to an increased perception of T2. The findings suggest the effects of perceptual mechanisms and instructional methods in L2 acquisition of Chinese tones.

Native language experience with tones influences both phonetic and lexical processes when acquiring a second tonal language

Second language acquisition of lexical tones requires that a learner form appropriate tone categories and bind those categories to lexical representations for fluent word recognition. Research has shown that second language (L2) learners with no previous tone language experience can become highly accurate at identification of tones in isolation, but, even at advanced levels, have difficulty using tones to differentiate real words from nonwords. The present research considers the same skills in L2 learners who do have previous tone experience. Using largely the same tasks and stimuli previously used with English speakers in Pelzl, Lau, Guo, & DeKeyser (2021a) (“PLGD21”), we examined the tone identification and (tone) word recognition abilities of thirty-three Vietnamese speakers who had achieved advanced L2 proficiency in Mandarin. Results indicate that Vietnamese speakers experience different tone identification difficulties than English speakers, presumably due to interference from their native language tone categories. However, unlike English speakers in previous studies, Vietnamese speakers did not display differences in lexical decision accuracy for vowel and tone nonwords. These results provide evidence of the complexities of cross-linguistic influence, illustrating that the influence of native language tones can be illuminated by considering perception and acquisition at multiple levels.

Perception of Different Tone Contrasts at Sub-Lexical and Lexical Levels by Dutch Learners of Mandarin Chinese.

This study explores the difficulties in distinguishing different lexical tone contrasts at both sub-lexical and lexical levels for beginning and advanced Dutch learners of Mandarin, using a sequence-recall task and an auditory lexical decision task. In both tasks, the Tone 2-Tone 3 contrast is most prone to errors for both groups of learners. A significant improvement in the advanced group was found for this tone contrast in the sub-lexical sequence recall task, but not in the lexical decision task. This is taken as evidence that utilizing tones in on-line spoken word recognition is more complex and demanding for L2 learners than in a memory-based task. The results of the lexical decision task also revealed that advanced learners have developed a stronger sensitivity to Tone 1 compared to the other three tones, with Tone 4 showing the least sensitivity. These findings suggest different levels of robustness and distinctiveness for the representation of different lexical tones in L2 learners’ lexicon and consequently different levels of proficiency in integrating tones for lexical processing. The observed patterns of difficulty are potentially related to the acoustic characteristics of different lexical tone contrasts as well as to the interference of the suprasegmental features of learner’s native language (i.e., the tonal contrasts of Dutch intonation) on the acquisition of the Mandarin lexical tone contrasts.

The Sociocultural-Cognitive Underpinnings in Error Correction: A Descriptive Study on Acquisition of Chinese Tones

The Sociocultural-Cognitive Underpinnings in Error Correction: A Descriptive Study on Acquisition of Chinese Tones

The effects of perceptual training on speech production of Mandarin sandhi tones by tonal and non-tonal speakers

This study examined the effects of perceptual training on the acquisition of sandhi tones by both tonal (Cantonese) and non-tonal (English) speakers. In the pre- and post-training tasks, participants were presented with two monosyllables in each trial and were asked to produce them as disyllables. During perceptual training, they heard trials of disyllabic words with and without sandhi rule applications and were trained to identify the two types of disyllabic words. Based on functional data analyses, Cantonese speakers improved in building up more detailed and native-like allotone representations and in turn exhibited more native-like speech production in many cases. However, American learners showed improvement mainly in the offset f0 values or the turning point, indicating that they might have failed to pay attention to the shape of the entire tonal contour during perceptual training. For tonal speakers, the improvement of allotone production occurred on both real and wug words, indicating that the perceptual training may lead to more accurate production of tone sandhi rules regardless of syllable types. American learners, however, might need more training to further modify the allotone representation to perform more accurate sandhi tone application, especially in wug words. Finally, phonetic bias did not correctly predict the success of allotone acquisition since other factors such as the acoustic cues used in processing allotones during perceptual training might have affected the learning results.

A Summary of Researches on Mandarin Tone Acquisition

Tone acquisition has always been a difficulty and focus of second language acquisition. Many studies have used the way of tone production or perception to reveal the influence of mother tongue experience on tone acquisition. Based on the review, this article discusses some experiments on tone production and perception, reveals the significance of these studies and explores possible future research directions.

The Sociocultural-Cognitive Underpinnings in Error Correction: A Descriptive Study on Acquisition of Chinese Tones

The Sociocultural-Cognitive Underpinnings in Error Correction: A Descriptive Study on Acquisition of Chinese Tones

Categorical Perception of Chinese Lexical Tones by Late Second Language Learners With High Proficiency: Behavioral and Electrophysiological Measures.

Although acquisition of Chinese lexical tones by second language (L2) learners has been intensively investigated, very few studies focused on categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones by highly proficient L2 learners. This study was designed to address this issue with behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Behavioral identification and auditory event-related potential (ERP) components for speech discrimination, including mismatch negativity (MMN), N2b, and P3b, were measured in 23 native Korean speakers who were highly proficient late L2 learners of Chinese. For the ERP measures, both passive and active listening tasks were administered to examine the automatic and attention-controlled discriminative responses to within- and across-category differences for carefully chosen stimuli from a lexical tone continuum. The behavioral task revealed native-like identification function of the tonal continuum. Correspondingly, the active oddball task demonstrated larger P3b amplitudes for the across-category than within-category deviants in the left recording site, indicating clear CP of lexical tones in the attentive condition. By contrast, similar MMN responses in the right recording site were elicited by both the across- and within-category deviants, indicating the absence of CP effect with automatic phonological processing of lexical tones at the pre-attentive stage even in L2 learners with high Chinese proficiency. Although behavioral data showed clear evidence of categorical perception of lexical tones in proficient L2 learners, ERP measures from passive and active listening tasks demonstrated fine-grained sensitivity in terms of response polarity, latency, and laterality in revealing different aspects of auditory versus linguistic processing associated with speech decoding by means of largely implicit native language acquisition versus effortful explicit L2 learning.

Auditory-Motor Mapping Training Facilitates Speech and Word Learning in Tone Language-Speaking Children With Autism: An Early Efficacy Study.

It has been reported that tone language-speaking children with autism demonstrate speech-specific lexical tone processing difficulty, although they have intact or even better-than-normal processing of nonspeech/melodic pitch analogues. In this early efficacy study, we evaluated the therapeutic potential of Auditory-Motor Mapping Training (AMMT) in facilitating speech and word output for Mandarin-speaking nonverbal and low-verbal children with autism, in comparison with a matched non-AMMT-based control treatment. Fifteen Mandarin-speaking nonverbal and low-verbal children with autism spectrum disorder participated and completed all the AMMT-based treatment sessions by intoning (singing) and tapping the target words delivered via an app, whereas another 15 participants received control treatment. Generalized linear mixed-effects models were created to evaluate speech production accuracy and word production intelligibility across different groups and conditions. Results showed that the AMMT-based treatment provided a more effective training approach in accelerating the rate of speech (especially lexical tone) and word learning in the trained items. More importantly, the enhanced training efficacy on lexical tone acquisition remained at 2 weeks after therapy and generalized to untrained tones that were not practiced. Furthermore, the low-verbal participants showed higher improvement compared to the nonverbal participants. These data provide the first empirical evidence for adopting the AMMT-based training to facilitate speech and word learning in Mandarin-speaking nonverbal and low-verbal children with autism. This early efficacy study holds promise for improving lexical tone production in Mandarin-speaking children with autism but should be further replicated in larger scale randomized studies. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16834627.

Characteristics of Effective Auditory Training: Implications From Two Training Programs That Successfully Trained Nonnative Cantonese Tone Identification in Monolingual Mandarin and Bilingual Mandarin-Taiwanese Tone Speakers.

Purpose Auditory training is important in pedagogical and clinical settings. In search of a more effective perceptual program for training new suprasegmental categories, this study examined the effect of two auditory programs that incorporated five elements that have previously been identified to be effective for training nonnative segmental and suprasegmental speech sounds on the identification of a complex foreign lexical tone system (Cantonese) that contrasts both pitch shapes and pitch heights. To investigate the training outcomes in learners with different tonal systems, monolingual Mandarin-speaking learners who have a smaller native tonal system that contrasts pitch shapes only and bilingual Mandarin-Taiwanese-speaking learners who have a larger native tonal system that contrasts both pitch shapes and pitch heights were recruited for training. Method Thirty Mandarin-speaking monolinguals and 33 Mandarin-Taiwanese-speaking bilinguals in Taiwan were randomly assigned to two training programs, one with different tones and the other with the same tone preceding the target words in the same training block, and received six 90-min training sessions within 2 weeks. They took a Cantonese Tone Identification Test before training and after each training session. Twenty Cantonese native speakers in Hong Kong served as the reference group and took the same Cantonese Tone Identification Test. Results The two training programs were equally effective. Before training, the monolinguals performed poorer than the bilinguals. After training, the monolinguals and bilinguals in both training programs identified the six Cantonese tones in new words, new utterances, and novel speakers with comparable results, and their overall accuracy did not differ from that of the Cantonese native speakers. Conclusions Though learners with a larger and more complex native tonal system have initial advantage in learning nonnative tones, the intensive high-variability full-set training programs that provide explicit phonetic instruction and contrastive feedback of nonnative tones effectively promote nonnative tone acquisition in learners of different tone languages. The findings revealed factors affecting nonnative tone acquisition in tone speakers. The design of the two programs can be adopted in future programs for effective auditory training of segmental and suprasegmental speech sounds.

Review of Zhang (2018): Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones: Beyond First Language Transfer

Abstract This article reviews Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones: Beyond First Language Transfer 9789004305977

Longer Cochlear Implant Experience Leads to Better Production of Mandarin Tones for Early Implanted Children.

Children with cochlear implants (CIs) face challenges in acquiring tones, since CIs do not transmit pitch information effectively. It has been suggested that longer CI experience provides additional benefits for children implanted early, enabling them to achieve language abilities similar to that of normal-hearing (NH) children (Colletti 2009). Mandarin is a tonal language with four lexical tones and a neutral tone (T0), characterized by distinct pitch and durational patterns. It has been suggested that early implantation (i.e., before 2 years) greatly benefits the acquisition of Mandarin tones by children with CIs (Tang et al. 2019c). In this study, we extend those findings to investigate the effect of CI experience on the acquisition of Mandarin tones for children implanted early. We asked the extent to which they were able to produce distinct pitch and durational patterns of both lexical tones and T0 as a function of CI experience, and the extent to which their tonal productions were acoustically like that of NH children. Forty-four NH 3-year olds and 28 children implanted with CIs between 1 and 2 years, aged 3 to 7, were recruited. The children with CIs were grouped according to the length of CI experience: 3 to 6 years, 2 to 3 years, and 1 to 2 years. Lexical tone and T0 productions were elicited using a picture-naming task. Tonal productions from the children with CIs were acoustically analyzed and compared with those from the NH children. Children with 3 to 6 years of CI experience were able to produce distinct pitch and durational patterns for both lexical tones and T0, with NH-like acoustic realizations. Children with 2 to 3 years of CI experience were also able to produce the expected tonal patterns, although their productions were not yet NH-like. Those with only 1 to 2 years of CI experience, however, were not yet able to produce the distinct acoustic patterns for either lexical tones or T0. These results provide acoustic evidence demonstrating that, when Mandarin-speaking children are implanted before the age of 2, only those with 3 to 6 years of experience were able to produce NH-like tones, including both lexical tone and T0. Children with shorter CI experience (less than 3 years) were unable to produce distinct acoustic patterns for the different tones. This suggests that at least 3 years of CI experience is still needed for early implanted children to acquire tonal distinctions similar to those of NH 3-year olds.