The Study On Mandarin Tone2and Tone3by American And Thai Speakers

Tone2and tone3present the most difficulty in learning and teaching speech ofChinese as a second language. These are the focus of our study of L2speechacquisition. This paper investigates the acquisition of tone2and tone3by Americanand Thai native speakers through perceptual experiments, production experiments andperception-training experiments. We present four aspects:1) research on theperception of falling-rising synthesized tones and natural tones, divided by nativespeakers, American and Thai speakers;2) perception training research on tone2andtone3by American and Thai speakers;3) production research on tone2and tone3bynative and second-language speakers;4) relationships between perception andproduction of tone2and tone3.The results suggests that:1) in the perception pattern of native speakers, there aretwo acoustic cues which affect the identification of tone2and tone3significantly, andthe interaction of the two cues is significant; the results also show that the turningpoint is the key--it has a larger effect and is the critical cue in the perception space,unlike the final pitch, which is not the critical cue, but has a supplementary effect. Inthe perception patterns of American and Thai speakers, the final pitch has a largereffect on the identification of tone2and tone3, rather than the turning point.Compared with American speakers, Thai speakers have advantages in perceiving bothcues.2) The results of the perceptual training indicate that the effects of the two cuescan be improved by short-term training. Due to the time limitation, the mechanism ofthe interaction between the final pitch and turning point has not been acquired. Theresults also show that the improvement of synthetic tones helps the improvement ofnatural tones; the significant improvement appears in the latter part of the training,which indicates the sufficient input is the key of the tone acquisition. Finally, thevisual feedback also helps the acquisition of the acoustic and category information.3) The acoustic results show that the pitch contours of tone2and tone3are significantlydifferent; the result of di-syllable tones shows that the pitch height in the connectionof the two syllables will be changed significantly because of the co-articulation, whilethere is no significant change happens to the turning point. This phenomenonindicates, in the acoustic way, that the turning point is the key character. For theAmerican and Thai speakers, co-articulation also happens, but the order of the pitchheight is different from native speakers, which means the American and Thai speakershave not acquired the “relative height” of Mandarin tones. However, the Thaispeakers also have advantages in the production of tone2and tone3over the Americanspeakers.4) The results of the perceptual and acoustic experiments demonstrate therelativity between the perception and production of tone2and tone3, and also thecomplexity of the relativity.The results of this paper support the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), test andcomplement the Cue-Weighting Model (CWM), and enrich the results of the tone2and tone3research. Based on the results of each experiment, some coping advice oftone2and tone3acquisition and teaching are offered.