Shen Guannan, Froud Karen
Department of Psychology, Temple University, 1808 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA.
Department of Biobehavioral Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, New York, New York 10027, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2016 Dec;140(6):4396. doi: 10.1121/1.4971765.
Whether native speakers of non-tonal languages can acquire categorical representations of lexical tones remains controversial. This study investigates the acquisition of lexical tone categories by native English speakers learning Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language by comparing the categorical perception (CP) of lexical tones between three groups of listeners: (1) native English speakers who had taken advanced Mandarin courses in colleges; (2) native English speakers with no knowledge of Mandarin Chinese; and (3) native Mandarin speakers. Two tonal continua derived from natural speech within carrier phrases were created through interpolation within two tonal contrasts (tone 1/tone 4, T1/T4; tone 2/tone 3, T2/T3). Results showed categorical-like perception of tones by native Mandarin speakers. The inexperienced English speakers performed near chance on discrimination tasks and showed significantly broader identification boundaries than the other two groups. The learners of Mandarin showed similar pattern of CP to native Mandarin speakers, but with higher overall discrimination scores. Findings suggest that CP of lexical tone may be available to advanced second language learners.
母语为非声调语言的人是否能够获得词汇声调的范畴化表征仍然存在争议。本研究通过比较三组听众对词汇声调的范畴化感知（CP），调查以英语为母语、将汉语作为外语学习的人对词汇声调类别的习得情况：（1）在大学修过高级汉语课程的以英语为母语的人；（2）不懂汉语的以英语为母语的人；（3）以汉语为母语的人。通过在两个声调对比（声调1/声调4，T1/T4；声调2/声调3，T2/T3）内进行插值，在载体短语中的自然语音基础上创建了两个声调连续体。结果显示，以汉语为母语的人对声调有类似范畴化的感知。没有经验的英语使用者在辨别任务上的表现接近随机水平，并且与其他两组相比，其识别边界明显更宽。汉语学习者表现出与以汉语为母语的人相似的CP模式，但总体辨别分数更高。研究结果表明，高级第二语言学习者可能能够获得词汇声调的CP。
