The Production of Mandarin Coarticulated Tones by Inexperienced ...

syllable. No clear explanation can be offered toexplain why Tone 4 was produced more accuratelyin initial syllable position. Syllable position,however, did not affect production accuracy of Tone1 or Tone 3 production.FIG 4. Mean percentage of accurate production ofcoarticulated tone of coarticulated Mandarin tone in differentsyllable positions by (A) inexperienced learners and (B)experienced learners. Error bars represent standard errors.5 DiscussionThe purpose of the study was to test whetherAmerican learners’ pronunciation of MandarinChinese coarticulated tones would improve withclassroom language learning experienced andwhether tonal environment, tonal context andsyllable position would affect their productionaccuracy.Effects of learning experienceThe results showed that experienced learnersproduced coarticulated tones with a higher accuracyrate than inexperienced learners. This resultconfirmed the findings from previous studies thatthe ability to perceive and produce L2 soundsimproves with experience.Effects of tonal environment and tonal contextThere was no effect of tonal environment ortonal context on Tone 2, Tone 3, or Tone 4production accuracy by either group of learners.However, there was an effect of tonal environmentand tonal context on the accuracy rate of Tone 1production by inexperienced learners, but not byexperienced learners. Inexperienced learnersproduced Tone 1 with a higher accuracy rate in theidentical tonal environment than in the non-identicaltonal environment. In addition, their production ofTone 1 was more accurate in compatible tonalcontext than in conflicting tonal context.Effects of syllable positionSyllable position affected how accurately Tone2 was produced by both experienced learners andinexperienced American learners. Both groupsshowed a higher production accuracy rate for Tone 2in the final syllable position. This result may beattributed to the rising intonation used to formquestions in English. On the other hand, the factorof syllable position only affected inexperiencedlearners’ production of Tone 4. For inexperiencedlearners, the accuracy rate of Tone 4 production onthe initial syllable was higher than that on the final6 ConclusionThis study revealed that American learners withmore learning experience were more accurate inproducing coarticulated Mandarin tones in disyllabicwords. Furthermore, it was found that withincreased experience, production of coarticulatedtone becomes more resistant to such phonologicaland phonetic factors as tonal contexts and syllableposition. Considering the effect of linguistic factorson the production of tones on disyllabic words byAmerican learners, it was found that tonalenvironment only affected tone 1 production andsyllable position affected tone 2 and tone 4production accuracy. Neither tonal environment orsyllable position has an influence on the accuracyrate of production of Tone 3.ReferenceFlege, J., Takagi, N. & Mann, V. (1995). Japaneseadults can learn to produce English /r/ and /l/and accurately, Language and Speech, 38, 25-55.Flege, J., Bohn, O.S., & Jang, S. (1997). The effectof experience on non-native subjects productionand perception of English vowels. Journal ofPhonetics, 25, 437- 470.He, Y., Wang, Q, & Wiltshire, C. (2008).Production of English lexical stress byinexperienced and experienced learners ofEnglish. Canadian Acoustics, Vol.36. No.3.128-129.Wang, Y., Jongman, A., and Sereno, J. (2003).Acoustic and perceptual evaluation of Mandarintone productions before and after perceptualtraining. Journal of the Acoustical Society ofAmerica , 113, 1033-1043.Wang, Y., Spence, M., Jongman, A., and Sereno, J.(1999). Training American listeners to perceiveMandarin tones. Journal of the AcousticalSociety of America 106, 3649-3658.Wayland, R.P. and Guion, S.G. (2004). TrainingEnglish and Chinese listeners to perceive Thaitones: A preliminary report.. Language Learning,54, 681-712.Wayland, R.P. & Guion, S.G. (2003). Perceptualdiscrimination of Thai tones by naïve andexperienced learners of Thai. AppliedPsycholinguistics 24, 113-129.Xu, Y. (1994). Production and perception ofcoarticulated tones. Journal of the AcousticalSociety of America 95: 2240-2253.