TY - JOUR
T1 - The effects of tonal experience on the categorization of Cantonese lexical tones into Japanese native pitch accent categories
AU - WONG, Janice W S
AU - Arai, Takayuki
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by STEC Sophia Lecturing – Research Grant 2019 from Sophia University and Faculty Research Grant (FRG1/17-18/025) from Hong Kong Baptist University. The authors thank Eri Iwagami and Shujie Yang especially for their kind assistance in data collection.
PY - 2020/5
Y1 - 2020/5
N2 - This study examined the effects of prosodic experience in the first (L1) and second (L2) language on the perception of nonnative lexical tones. Japanese naïve listeners (Group JN) and Japanese learners of Mandarin (Group J1M2) were instructed to categorize the six Cantonese lexical tones into their native pitch accent categories. Results showed that both groups could only categorize two tones into their native pitch accent categories, and their categorization patterns were different: Group JN only assimilated two rising tones, T2 and T5, into the final-accented LH* while Group J1M2 assimilated high-rising T2 into LH* and low-falling T4 into initial-accented H*L. These preliminary results are only partly compatible with the assumptions of Perceptual Assimilation Model for Suprasegmentals (PAM-S) stating that non-native tonal categories will be assimilated to native prosodic categories, but provide more evidence that learning a more complicated system with lexical F0 variations at the phonetic level (i.e. Mandarin) does influence the perceptual assimilation of nonnative tones.
AB - This study examined the effects of prosodic experience in the first (L1) and second (L2) language on the perception of nonnative lexical tones. Japanese naïve listeners (Group JN) and Japanese learners of Mandarin (Group J1M2) were instructed to categorize the six Cantonese lexical tones into their native pitch accent categories. Results showed that both groups could only categorize two tones into their native pitch accent categories, and their categorization patterns were different: Group JN only assimilated two rising tones, T2 and T5, into the final-accented LH* while Group J1M2 assimilated high-rising T2 into LH* and low-falling T4 into initial-accented H*L. These preliminary results are only partly compatible with the assumptions of Perceptual Assimilation Model for Suprasegmentals (PAM-S) stating that non-native tonal categories will be assimilated to native prosodic categories, but provide more evidence that learning a more complicated system with lexical F0 variations at the phonetic level (i.e. Mandarin) does influence the perceptual assimilation of nonnative tones.
KW - Japanese pitch accent
KW - Lexical tone perception
KW - Mandarin
KW - Perceptual Assimilation Model for Suprasegmentals (PAM-S)
KW - Tonal experience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85093895490&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-99
DO - 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-99
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85093895490
SN - 2333-2042
VL - 2020
SP - 484
EP - 488
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody
JF - Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody
T2 - 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020
Y2 - 25 May 2020 through 28 May 2020
ER -