Effects Of L1 Suprasegmentals On Tone And Intonation Production In L2 Mandarin

Both Mandarin lexical tones and intonations pose difficulties to non-native speakers.There are no lexical tones in Urdu,the first language(L1)of Pakistani learners.There are different tones in the L1 of Vietnamese learners compared with Mandarin tones.The present study aims at the effect of L1 suprasegmentals on Mandarin tone and intonation production by Pakistani and Vietnamese learners.The research questions are as follows:i.Can Pakistani and Vietnamese learners produce native-like Mandarin tones?ii.Can Pakistani and Vietnamese learners produce native-like Mandarin intonations?iii.Do Mandarin tones and intonations produced by Pakistani learners whose L1 is an intonation language,differ from those by Vietnamese learners whose L1 is a tone language?Pakistani learners,Vietnamese learners,and native Mandarin speakers participated in the two experiments.Experiment 1 compared tone production by Pakistani and Vietnamese learners of Mandarin as a second language(L2)in monosyllabic and disyllabic words,phrases with three and four syllables,and sentences with five and six syllables.Experiment 2 added sentence types of statements and questions as another factor and measured the production of both tone and intonation.Acoustic parameters including duration,the height of fundamental frequency(F0),F0 range,and F0 slope on each syllable,the turning point(TP)of tones,and the F0 differential between onset and the TP(ΔF0)in Tone 2 and Tone 3 were measured and analyzed.The results were as follows:i.Pakistani and Vietnamese learners cannot produce native-like Mandarin tones.ii.Pakistani and Vietnamese learners cannot produce native-like Mandarin intonations.iii.Pakistani and Vietnamese learners perform differently in Mandarin tone and intonation production.For Mandarin tone production,Pakistani learners produced native-like F0 height and range,but a longer duration for all tones.Pakistani learners also showed a less steep F0 slope in Tone 3 in questions with three syllables and Tone 4 in monosyllabic words.Their TP was later,and ΔF0 was larger in Tone 3 in disyllabic words.Vietnamese learners produced nativelike F0 height and slope,but a longer duration.They also showed a larger F0 range in Tone 3 in four-syllable questions.Their TP was later,and ΔF0 was larger in Tone 3 in monosyllabic and disyllabic words.For Mandarin intonation production,Pakistani learners produced native-like F0 height,but a longer duration.They also produced Mandarin intonations with a larger F0 range in Tone 1.Their F0 slope was less steep in statements in Tone 3 and in questions in Tone 2,Tone 3,and Tone 4.Vietnamese learners produced native-like F0 height and range.Their duration was longer.Their F0 slope was less steep in statements in Tone 3 and in questions in Tone 2 and Tone 4.The overall results indicated that both Pakistani and Vietnamese learners were not able to produce native-like Mandarin tone and intonation.Acoustic interaction between tone and intonation also resulted in difficulty in the L2 production of Mandarin tone and intonation in both F0 and duration.Speakers treated more syllables in each utterance as a whole rather than separated syllables.Besides the impact of the number of syllables,errors were most often found in Tone 3 production.Lower accuracy of intonation was found in questions than in statements.The tone experience in L1 facilitated Vietnamese learners to produce more native-like tones and intonations in L2 Mandarin than Pakistani learners.