Categorical Perception Of Stops In Standard Chinese By Uygur

The present study aims to explore the role of the first language (L1) phonetic categories in the second language (L2) learning. A categorical perception (identification and discrimination) is conducted to investigate how Uygur learners process the aspirated and unaspirated stop categories in Standard Chinese (SC). There have not been clear conclusions about the categorical nature of perception of SC stop consonants by nonnative listeners in previous work. Thus, in the present study this issue is reopened in a crossing-linguistic study comparing native Han Chinese and Uygur listeners. The premise of the study has been based on two L2 speech hypotheses: Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and"phonetic experience". In our study the following issues are addressed: (1) How well do the Uygur students perceive stop consonants in SC? Will Uygur speakers learn to perceive voiceless aspirated and unaspirated syllable-initial stop consonants in terms of VOT, with a pattern similar to that of native speakers of Chinese? (2) How categorical is the perception of SC stops by Chinese and Uygur speakers? (3) How the SC stops are mapped onto the Uygur stops? Would the Uygur learners set a new category or assimilate the SC stops into their native stop categories?31 Uygur learners from southern Xinjiang, and 31 Han subjects participated in the experiment. In Experiment 1, these listeners were tested on 8 continua of stop + vowel syllables for each bilabial, alveolar and velar stop. These stimuli were consisted of VOT continuums ranging from [pha] to [pa], [tha] to [ta], and [kha] to [ka], the VOT values varied from 120ms to 0ms, with a decrease of VOT in aspiration portion. The subjects were required to identify the stop of target syllables in word isolation and within carrier sentence. In Experiment 2, subjects were asked to complete an A-B two–step discrimination test, where the A-B trials encompassed three possible combinations:①two adjacencies of the 8 synthetic continua along VOT values of each bilabial, alveolar and velar stop in identification test were combined together;②each of the 8 synthetic continua of stops was chained with Uygur syllable which began...