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Mandarin language learrting by American students: A research study on orthographic influences on pronunciation accuracy in second-language learners' Kai Walker Richter A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics Swarthmore College December 2015 Abstract The Critical Age Hypothesis states that language acquisition is inherent to humans, but that humans lose this ability over time after passing through several critical age periods (Lenneberg 1967). One of these periods of particular importance is around the age of ll-14, after which adolescent speakers who begin to study another language will struggle to develop the competence of a native speaker, with particular difficulty in learning the phonetic inventory (Krashen 1981). Furthermore, the theory of phonetic transfer suggests that aspects of the phonetics of one's native language naturally influence the learning of the phonetics of a target language (Gass and Selinker 1992). This study finds significant evidence for language transfer in four adult, native English­ speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese. The similarity between Mandarin and English vowels [i] often leads to positive transfer for the speakers. However, negative transfer is also present to a large degree for these speakers. Relative vowel differences, such as the differing sounds for [u] between English and Chinese, result in significant negative transfer and pronunciation errors. In fact, negative transfer is present to some degree for most of the Chinese vowels. The subjects of this study even mispronounce [i] on occasion, which would be impossible if relative sound similarity or difference were the only influential factor. Thus, this thesis contends that orthographic inputs also lead to negative transfer. For example, the pinyin (i) in a Chinese word such as bin (~-'guest') is pronounced as [i]. Conversely, in English, this letter in the same environment, 'bin,' is pronounced [I]. This incongruous mapping of orthography to phonetics impacts American learners, who in this way are hindered by the use of pinyin before fully mastering the Chinese phonetic system. , I would like to first thank my thesis advisor Prof. Shizhe Huang for her guidance and understanding throughout this whole writing process. Your support has been invaluable to me. I would also like to thank Prof. Jiajia Wang for believing that I was capable of this research project and for helping me dig through various Chinese articles. Thank you Prof. Donna Jo Napoli for being my second thesis reader, but also thank you for always encouraging my love oflinguistics and helping me when I feel lost. A special thank you to my friends from abroad that let me record their wonderful Chinese. Thank you to Daniel Plesniak for your thoughtful comments on my thesis. Finally, thank you to all my friends and family who have supported me throughout this semester. 1 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................3 l.l Critical Age Hypothesis 3 l.2 Language Transfer Theory 4 l.3 Results 7 l.4 Outline of Thesis 8 2 Background .................................................................................... 9 2.1 Mandarin Phonetic Inventory 9 2.2 Standard American English Phonetic Inventory 10 2.3 Chinese Pinyin 12 2.4 Vowel Properties 13 2.5 Previous Work 14 2.5.1 Chen, Xu and Gao (2012) 14 2.5.2 Gao and Shi (2006) 15 2.5.3 Bassetti (2006) l7 3 Methodology ................................................................................... 18 3.1 Test Subjects 18 3.2 Experimental Materials 19 3.3 Laboratory Equipment 20 4 Data ............................................................................................. 20 4.1 English Vowel Pattern 20 4.2 Mandarin Vowel Pattern by Native Speakers 23 4.3 Mandarin Vowel Pattern by American Students 25 5 Results ...........................................................................................29 6 Discussion ......................................................................................33 Appendix A ...................................................................................... 35 Appendix B ...................................................................................... 36 Appendix C ...................................................................................... 37 References ........................................................................................51 2 1 Introduction 1.1 Critical Age Hypothesis The languages in which a speaker reaches fluency at a young age are called native languages, or mother tongues. All other languages that a speaker learns throughout his or her life are non­ native languages, also referred to as target languages or foreign languages. A regular developing child that is consistently exposed to a language from a young enough age will naturally acquire this language. That is, there is no evidence "that any conscious and systematic teaching oflanguage takes place" when children begin to speak between their 18th and 28th month (Lenneberg 1967:125). Thus, language acquisition is inherent to human development. However, it happens that this innate ability of human language acquisition is not a property that persists indefinitely. But rather, this phase is outgrown at a young age (roughly five years old), as the child enters a period that "causes an increase in our ability to learn but damages our ability to acquire" (Krashen 1981: 8). In the second stage, which ends during puberty, a speaker can still learn a language with native fluency through intentional study. This discovery of multiple developmental stages during which humans can acquire and learn new languages is the core of the Critical Age Hypothesis. It follows that most adults struggle to learn new languages, even though young children do this naturally. While it is possible for an adult who has already passed through puberty to learn another language, this task requires intentional learning and teaching and will be much more difficult than it would be for a pre-pubescent adolescent. Learning a new language is a very difficult task for an adult, however the phonetics of a language often proves to be the most elusive aspect for learners. Chai (2013) finds that age of onset oflearning for adult, non-native speakers of Mandarin is more negatively correlated with 3 rate of phonetic learning than with grammar, vocabulary or orthography (703). Even though the ability to learn a language continues all life long, speakers who begin to study another language around the ages 11-14 will struggle to develop the competence of a native speaker, with particular difficulty in learning the phonetic inventory (Lenneberg 1967: 181). Thus, many speakers of foreign languages may reach a level of comfort and mastery in the language equal to a native speaker, but emulating the native accent becomes quite difficult after one passes the latter critical age mentioned above. This paper investigates non-native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and assesses their phonetic skills in this target language. According to the Critical Age Hypothesis, since all of these speakers began learning Mandarin upon entering college and after having passed through the critical period of language learning, these learners will experience impaired learning that should manifest itself through a distinct foreign accent. This study aims to quantitatively identify the pronunciation errors of these subjects, which will help corroborate the theory of the Critical Age Hypothesis. 1.2 Language Transfer Theory One effect of the phenomenon described by the Critical Age Hypothesis is that after passing the critical age, foreign language learners begin to experience language transfer. The theory of language transfer states that one's native language will influence the learning of non-native languages-relative similarities prime learning, while relative differences inhibit learning (as described in Gass and Selinker 1992:6). When one's native language results in primed learning, this is called positive phonetic transfer; conversely, when the impact of the native language is to inhibit learning, this phenomenon is called negative phonetic transfer. When the native language 4 proves to have no overall effect on learning of a specific target language, this is tenned zero transfer. While language transfer is present in all areas of language and every stage of language learning, this study focuses on phonetic transfer. One part of learning a new language is to learn to pronounce all the various sounds of that language. While many of the sounds of the target language may be different from one's native language, there are likely also other sounds that are similar to one's native language in that they differ on only one or two features. Much of the research surrounding phonetic transfer also discusses the phonological effects of transfer; in citing, this thesis employs the tenninology used by each specific writer, but this thesis is focused exclusively on phonetic competence and will not make phonological analysis. Gass and Selinker (1992) describe the process oflanguage learning through phonetic transfer, arguing that proper pronunciation of a second language is "largely a matter of progressively restructuring the mother tongue phonological system in the direction of the target language" (23). Thus, instead of learning to produce entirely novel sounds, humans who have passed through the adolescent critical age instinctively make use

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