So, C. K. & Best, C. T. (2010). Cross-language perception of non-native tonal contrasts: Effects of native phonological and phonetic influences. Language and Speech. 53 (2), 373–293.

Presentation: Hsiao-chien

Summary: Chris

This study aimed to test how listeners of different language backgrounds perceived Mandarin lexical tones. Three groups of speakers were recruited, including the Mandarin-naïve Hong Kong Cantonese speakers, Japanese speakers, and Canadian English speakers. The prediction for tonal perception of Mandarin-naïve tonal speakers was that they would have greater difficulty in distinguishing Mandarin tone pairs of T1-T4 and T2-T3, since the two tones of each pair were allotones of each other in Cantonese. For non-tone language speakers, it was predicted that Japanese listeners should more easily distinguish Mandarin tones than English listeners. Listeners’ performance was analyzed by examining tonal sensitivities (A’ scores) and tonal confusion. Results showed that English speakers performed worse than Cantonese and Japanese speakers for Tone 4, but not for other tones. However, Cantonese speakers did not perform better than Japanese speakers in Tone 4, indicating that linguistic experiences played a role in tonal perception. For tonal confusion, all listeners performed better for tonal pairs with dissimilar features than those with similar features, which is consistent with the prediction of Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM). The results implicated that the experience of a tone language may not necessarily facilitates tonal perception. Instead, one should also consider the role of the phonemic status (e.g., the existence of allotones) and the phonetic features (similarities vs. dissimilarities) when exploring the perception of non-native tones.