Foreign Accent in Second Language Mandarin Chinese

Pelzl, Eric

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-3809-4_12

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…This is also true for tone learning. The tone perceptual difficulty driven by a non-optimal listening condition has been consistently reported for language beginners (e.g., Pelzl, 2021 ), advanced learners (e.g., Zou et al, 2017 ), and even the early and highly proficient bilinguals (e.g., Liu and Ning, 2021 ). Moreover, tonal languages (e.g., Cantonese, Mandarin) use pitch frequency (F0) as one of the primary cues of tones to convey lexical meanings in a large-scale lexicon ( Whalen and Xu, 1992 ; Hallé et al, 2004 ).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…The failure to inhibit an L1 transfer on the attentional level may lead to a non-adaptation of the speech variants. Further, such adapting barriers on an acoustic-to-phonetic level may tangle with wrong lexical interpretation from sound to a word and arouse misunderstanding in daily non-optimal listening environments ( Bradlow and Alexander, 2007 ; Meng, 2021 ; Pelzl, 2021 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The effect of simultaneous exposure on the attention selection and integration of segments and lexical tones by Urdu-Cantonese bilingual speakers

et al. 2022

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In the perceptual learning of lexical tones, an automatic and robust attention-to-phonology system enables native tonal listeners to adapt to acoustically non-optimal speech, such as phonetic conflicts in daily communications. Previous tone research reveals that non-native listeners who do not linguistically employ lexical tones in their mother tongue may find it challenging to attend to the tonal dimension or integrate it with the segmental features. However, it is unknown whether the attentional interference initially caused by a maternal attentional system would continue influencing the non-optimal tone perception for simultaneous bilingual teenagers. From an endpoint in the age of language acquisition, we investigate whether the tone-specific attention mechanism developed by the Urdu-Cantonese simultaneous bilinguals is automatic enough to assist them in adapting to a phonetically-conflicting environment. Three groups of teenagers engaged in a four-condition ABX task: Urdu-Cantonese simultaneous bilinguals, Cantonese native listeners, and Urdu-speaking, late learners of Cantonese. The results showed that although the simultaneous bilinguals could phonologically process Cantonese tones in a Cantonese-like way under a conflict-free listening condition, they still failed in adapting to the phonetic conflicts, especially the segment-induced ones. It thus demonstrated that the simultaneous exposure and years of regular education in Hong Kong local schools still could not automatically guarantee simultaneous bilingual processing of Cantonese tones. In interpreting the findings, it hypothesized that, except for simultaneous exposure, the development of a tone-specific attention mechanism is also likely to be L1-inhibitory, tone experience-driven, and language-specific for simultaneous bilinguals.

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