Acoustic characteristics of English lexical stress produced by native Mandarin speakers

Abstract

Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese have difficulty producing native-like English stress contrasts. Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional, involving manipulation of fundamental frequency ͑F0͒, duration, intensity and vowel quality. Errors in any or all of these correlates could interfere with perception of the stress contrast, but it is unknown which correlates are most problematic for Mandarin speakers. This study compares the use of these correlates in the production of lexical stress contrasts by 10 Mandarin and 10 native English speakers. Results showed that Mandarin speakers produced significantly less native-like stress patterns, although they did use all four acoustic correlates to distinguish stressed from unstressed syllables. Mandarin and English speakers' use of amplitude and duration were comparable for both stressed and unstressed syllables, but Mandarin speakers produced stressed syllables with a higher F0 than English speakers. There were also significant differences in formant patterns across groups, such that Mandarin speakers produced English-like vowel reduction in certain unstressed syllables, but not in others. Results suggest that Mandarin speakers' production of lexical stress contrasts in English is influenced partly by native-language experience with Mandarin lexical tones, and partly by similarities and differences between Mandarin and English vowel inventories.

Prosodic Transfer in the Beginning-and Advanced-Level Chinese Learners' Production of English Word Stress

“…However, the amount of F0 in the stressed syllables of ESL learners exceeded more than native American English speakers. This result is consistent with the reported by [3]. Such F0 deviation may be attributable to two explanations: 1) the anthropomorphic discrepancy between Chinese and American speakers lead the F0 difference.…”

“…Such lengthening of the stressed syllables by the beginning-level and the advanced-level learners is similar to that of native speakers. This finding is consistent with [3]. Whereas, compared with native speakers, both the beginning-level and the advanced-level learners produced the stressed and the unstressed syllables with relatively shorter duration.…”

“…Zhang et al reported that Mandarin speakers could produce native-like intensity and duration, but they produced stressed syllables with a higher F0 than native speakers [3].…”

“…Difference in timing types can result in the durational discrepancy between stressed and unstressed syllables. It has been proved that the timing difference may cause the problems in L2 speech production [3].…”

“…The problems of Chinese learners faced in learning English stress were assumed to arise from tonal transfer [3].Nguyen found that due to L1 tonal transfer, the be inners and the advanced Vietnamese learners could use F0 and intensity to signal stress in a native way, though the advanced speakers could produce native-like duration stress contrast, beginners failed to differentiates stress by duration [1]. Zhang et al reported that Mandarin speakers could produce native-like intensity and duration, but they produced stressed syllables with a higher F0 than native speakers [3].…”