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 of prior knowledge of sounds from one's native language to produce the sounds of a target language. The process oflanguage

learning in this way becomes a matter of utilizing positive phonetic transfer and overcoming negative phonetic transfer to shape one's current phonetic system to more closely resemble the target language.

The distinction among positive, negative, and zero transfer can at times be difficult to understand. Looking at vowels for instance-as this study does-one might expect a vowel that

is not present in one's native language to undergo negative transfer. However, if the speaker is

capable of replicating the features of this vowel and there are no other vowels in the immediate

5 neighborhood in the speaker's native language phonetic inventory, this may actually be an

instance of zero transfer. In contrast, if the foreign vowels are completely outside the native vowel space or have a feature that is unfamiliar to the speaker, such as nasalization, then this would likely result in negative transfer. The features specific to Mandarin and English vowels that influence which form of transfer occurs will be discussed at further length in Section 2.3.

However, it is important to note at this point that when considering phonetic transfer, vowel

identity itself is not sufficient to predict which form of transfer will take place; one must also

bear in mind the features of the sounds themselves.

Furthermore, even if a vowel is present in both the native language and the target

language, negative transfer may still occur if the sounds of these vowels differ even minutely in their pronunciation. Thus, it is the relative similarities and differences between native and target vowels-not the presence or absence of vowels themselves-that determine the type of transfer that will occur.

Another important feature that may result in language transfer is the orthographic representation of words in the target language. This is especially relevant for Mandarin Chinese,

as language educators have employed various writing systems to transliterate the hanzi

(characters) to a Latin based writing system. The most commonly used writing system today is

pinyin, which is "a phonologically transparent orthography with one-to-one grapheme-phoneme

correspondences (e.g. (rna) = [rna], (mang) = maJ))" (Bassetti 2006:99). While there is a one-to­

one relationship between graphemes and phonemes (or sounds) for each pinyin word, the same

pinyin letter may represent different sounds in different contexts.

One notable example of this pattern is the pinyin letter (u), which corresponds either to

the vowels [u1 or [y]. Thus, Bassetti (2006) argues that the orthographic representations of

6 pinyin impact the ways in which foreign speakers of Chinese pronounce words, because "the

orthographic input is interfering with the phonological input in the creation of L2 learners' mental representations of the L2 phonology" (98). Section 2.3 explains in more thorough detail the system of pinyin and the corresponding sounds in Mandarin.

Therefore, elements such as sound differences and orthographic input contribute to negative phonetic transfer. In order to achieve a near-native ability in terms of pronunciation, one must overcome the negative transfer resulting from these various factors.

1.3 Results

This study finds significant evidence for language transfer in four native English-speaking

learners of Mandarin. The similarity between Mandarin and English sounds [i] often leads to

positive transfer for the foreign learner of Mandarin. 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

difference were the only influential factor of negative transfer. 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.

7 1.4 Outline of Thesis

Section 2 of this paper focuses on the background of the study. The following two sub-sections

of this paper, 2.1 and 2.2, will respectively outline the structure of Mandarin Chinese and

Standard American English and detail the phonetic inventories of vowels present in each

language. Next, the paper goes on in sub-section 2.3 to elaborate on the history and rules of

pinyin. Sub-section 2.4 describes the properties of vowels that allow them to be analyzed

quantitatively so as to demonstrate the phonetic transfer present in articulation. Finally, sub­

section 2.5 highlights previous work that linguists have done in researching language transfer as

it applies to speakers of Mandarin Chinese.

Section 3 reviews the methodology used for this study and provides an overview of the test subjects, experimental materials, and research equipment in sub-sections 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.

Sub-section 3.2 also contains descriptions of the information and data contained in Appendices A,

B andC.

Moving forward, section 4 presents the data in three groupings: first, sub-section 4.1

covers the vowel pattern of native speakers of Standard American English; sub-section 4.2

describes the vowel patter of native speakers of Mandarin Chinese; and lastly, sub-section 4.3

proceeds to discuss the vowel pattern of the non-native speakers of Chinese.

Section 5 examines the data, makes judgments on pronunciation accuracy and degree of

phonetic transfer, and hypothesizes on potential sources of error.

Finally, section 6 summarizes findings and provides suggestions for possible pedagogical

shifts to enhance the education of Mandarin to non-native speakers to help reduce pronunciation

errors for these students.

8 2 Background

2.1 Mandarin Phonetic Inventory

Chinese is a member of the Sino-Tibetan language family of languages (Paul, Simons and

Fennig 2015). There are at least eight different varieties of Chinese that are mutually

unintelligible, and each variety has its own dialects and variations. Nonetheless, one variation of

Chinese-the Northern variant-is standardized and spoken by a wide section of China's

population. This language, which is commonly referred to as Mandarin or Putonghua, is a

standardized form oflanguage in the People's Republic of China (PRC) based off the of Beijing

dialect and spoken natively by 70% of citizens (Ru 2009:24). This paper uses Chinese and

Mandarin (or Mandarin Chinese) interchangeably, although both terms refer to the standardized form of the Northern variant noted above.

The phonetic inventory of Mandarin Chinese consists of seven main vowels, nine

diphthongs, and four triphthongs (Bassetti 2006:99). This study follows the vowel selection

process of Shi (2002), who defines vowels that can stand as the only sound segment in a nucleus

as yiji yuanyin (-!:&;lI3'f). This paper utilizes this same definition and refers to these vowels as

"main vowels." The main vowels are of Mandarin are as follows: [i], [y], [1.1, [1], [,], [u] and [a].

The vowels [e] and [0] are found in diphthongs or triphthongs, but this study chooses to focus on the vowels that can occur as the only sound segment in a nucleus. Section 2.3 contains examples

of each of these vowels and their corresponding pinyin representations.

Two of the listed vowels, [1.1 and [1f, are not written in IPA script, and in fact, there is

some debate as to whether or not these two phones should be classified as vowels. As Duanmu

(2007) notes, some linguists argue that these two sounds have four formants and are found in

2 These two vowels are both denoted by the pinyin (i) and written in pinyin respectively as shi and si

9 complementary distribution with [i], and thus can be viewed as an allophone of /i/. The

proponents of this view call [LJ and [1] apical vowels, while the critics of this theory prefer to refer to these two sounds as syllabic consonants, and write them [z] and [L(], respectively. These

detractors highlight that certain consonants such as [I] have formants, and so this is not a unique feature of vowels and is not a sufficient test for vowel character. However, a vowel is the only required component in Mandarin syllable structure, and so it is most logical to classify these two

phones as apical vowels (Hu 2009:25).

2.2 Standard American English Phonetic Inventory

English is a Germanic language of the Indo-European language family (Paul, Simons and Fennig

2015). The vowels of Standard American Newscaster English are representative of the accent most frequently used in the United States, and are most phonetically different from other forms

of English such as Australian English or British English. While the pronunciation differences

between these groups are large, the differences among varieties of English spoken in the United

States are relatively small and so the phonetic relationships for most accents will be the same

(Ladefoged and Johnson 2015:95). This study focuses on the patterns present in Standard

American English, which will hereafter be referred to as simply English.

The phonetic inventory of English has eight main vowels: [i], [I], [£], [re], [u], [0], [a]

and [A] (Ladefoged and Johnson 2015:96). Table I lists these eight vowels with corresponding

English words (used in this study), to show environments for all of the sounds and several

orthographic representations. Only two of these monophthongs, [i] and [u], are shared with

Mandarin. While this information is consistent for most American speakers, some Americans,

especially those from the Midwest, have a slightly different accent and have separate vowels for

10 the vowels in "cot" and "caught." For these speakers, the vowels in these two words are [a] and

[0], respectively. However, each speaker in this study claims to not differentiate between these two sounds, and thus this thesis does not collect data on [0].

In addition to the eight monophthongs listed above, English also consists of six different

diphthongs: [El], [aI], [01], lao], [00] and [ju] (Ladefoged and Johnson 2015:96). Five of these

diphthongs are classified as movements from one of the abovementioned vowels to another. The

sixth diphthong, [ju], is considered by some to be a sequence of a consonant followed by a vowel.

Nonetheless, Ladefoged and Johnson (2015) argue that it patterns like the other vowels of

English and so should be treated as a diphthong (99).

Vowel English word IPA r i 1 'sheep' [lip 1 r s 1 'set' rsstl r I 1 'ship' [J1p 1 [ re ] 'sat' [sret] [A] 'shut' [fAt] [ u ] 'shoot' [fut] [ 0 ] 'soot' [sot] r a 1 'shop' [rapl

Table l. Example words for each of the main vowels of English

It is interesting to note that several of these diphthongs involve vowels, such as [e] and

[a], that do not occur in a simple monophthong in American English. Furthermore, these vowels that serve as start or end positions for the diphthong may not be exactly the same allophone as the one that is produced in a simple monophthong. For instance, the diphthong [aI], as in a word

like buy in American English, "moves toward a high front vowel, but ... it does not go much

beyond a mid-front vowel" (Ladefoged and Johnson 2015:98). Thus, while some sounds do not

occur in English as a simple monophthong, this is not to say that speakers of American English

II never produce these sounds in everyday speech. This paper focuses exclusively on the monophthongs of English to maintain consistency with the Chinese vowels.

2.3 Chinese Pinyin

Pinyin is a form of Romanized phonetic transcription system that was developed by the Chinese

government in 1958 with the goal of facilitating Chinese language education to both native and non-native speakers alike (Du 2010:5). This system uses 25 of the 26 Roman letters for transcribing hanz/ Table 2 outlines the five pinyin letters used to represent the vowels studied in this thesis, and the phonetic expression of these graphemes based on environment.

Pinyin Vowel Identity Phonetic Environment (a) [ a] always [, ] default (e) [ e ] in diphthongs [ i ] default (i) [L] only in (zhi, chi, shi, ri) [ 1] only in (zi, ci, si) [u] default (u) [y] only after (j, q, x) (ii) [y] only after (I, n)

Table 2. The five pinyin graphemes that correspond to the main Mandarin vowels.

As stated in sub-section 1.2, pinyin aims to be a phonetically transparent writing system

in which each grapheme corresponds to one sound. Section 2.5.3 highlights several instances where this one-to-one relationship is not upheld; but overall, pinyin is widely used as "the first

step to literacy in Chinese" since it is so highly effective at bridging the gap between Chinese writing and speech (Du 2010: 2).

th 3 The 26 , (v), is only used for transliteration of foreign words

12 Table 3 provides several more examples of pinyin that includes both vowels and

consonants. Along with the pinyin is the phonetic transcription in IP A, the tone (represented as a

suprasegmental in pinyin), the character and the English definition. The seven examples given

are all words analyzed as data in this study, with one example for each of the seven main vowels.

Pinyin IPA4 Tone Hanzi English

kiing [khalJ] 1 JJ!t 'healthy' bU [pu] 4 /F 'not'

jln [t~in] 3 1:£ 'only'

yu [y] 4 """'f'l 'to educate' sf [s1] 1 irr¥!, 'to think'

che [t~h,] 1 .$. 'car'

zhi [tnl 2 1i 'to be worth' Table 3. Examples of Chmese words with pmym, phonetic transcnptlOn, tone denotation, character (hanzi), and English definition.

2.4 Vowel Properties

All vowels in this study can be categorized according to the following three features: high and

low tongue position, front and back tongue position, and lip roundness (Ladefoged and Johnson

2015:22).

In addition to the physiological characteristics of vowels, every vowel has a unique set of

physical characteristics. According to the first fonnant (F 1) and the second fonnant (F2) of a vowel, one can accurately detennine which vowel is being produced. Plotting the first formant

and second formant on a graph fonns a vowel chart. When plotted correctly, this figure is closely related to the physiological picture of the mouth relative to tongue position. The first fonnant relates to tongue height-tongue height increases with F I-while the second fonnant relates to

4 Again, the vowels [1.1 and [1] are exceptions and are not IPA script

13 tongue frontness-the tongue moves further forward as F2 increases (Ladefoged and Johnson

2015:24).

Generally speaking, vowel formants remain fairly constant for any given vowel for one

person, but the same vowel between different speakers may have slight variations. This is

especially the case between male and female speakers. It is also important to note that the tone of

a word in Mandarin only impacts the fundamental frequency (FO) of the sound, whereas the frequencies ofFl and F2 remain constant across all tone variants (Duanmu 2007:228).

2.5 Previous Work

2.5.1 Chen, Xu and Gao (2012)

Chen, Xu, and Gao (2012) studied the phonetic transfer present for Thai students of Mandarin.

This study researches the same main Mandarin vowels as this thesis and finds significant

evidence for phonetic transfer.

Thai is a member of the Tai Kadai language family and like Mandarin is also a tonal

language (Paul, Simons and Fennig 2015). Moreover, Thai is a complex language with eighteen vowels that occur in a monophthong: [a, a:,:), :):, i, i:, 0, 0:, W, W:, U, U:, E, E:, e, e:, ;;'), a:] (Chen,

Xu and Gao 2012: 109). Thus, Thai is not closely related phonetically to Chinese, although

several of the vowels ([a], [i], and [ul) are shared between the two languages.

This study selects two native Chinese speakers as a control group and two Thai college

students studying in China to test for the effects of language transfer. Each subject is asked to read a list of words that contain examples of the seven Chinese main vowels, and the Thai

students are also asked to read a word list that contains the main Thai vowels.

14 This study concludes that the Thai subjects suffer greatly from negative phonetic transfer.

The only vowel that these subjects consistently pronounce correctly when speaking Mandarin is the low vowel [a]. This is a clear instance of positive transfer, but why does this not occur with the other two shared vowels? Chen, Xu and Gao argue that the pronunciation errors arise from negative transfer due to sound difference. For the Thai students, learning [i] and [u] is initially easier, but these subjects eventually suffer from the impact offeatural differences. Namely, since

Thai distinguishes vowels based on length, the students fail to consistently produce only the short versions of the vowels.

Thus, this study shows that features other than vowel height, frontness, and lip rounding can cause phonetic transfer. Thai and English are not very similar languages, and so the results of

Chen, Xu and Gao (2012) will be different from those of this thesis. Nonetheless, this paper reinforces evidence for language transfer theory.

2.5.2 Gao and Shi (2006)

Gao and Shi (2006) report on a study similar to that of Chen, Xu and Gao (2012) that also focuses on the vowels of foreign language learners. However, rather than looking at Mandarin vowels, Gao and Shi trace the phonetic transfer present in the pronunciation of French vowels by native speakers of Mandarin.

French has nine main vowels that occur in a monophthong: [i], [a], [u], [y], [e], [0], [£],

[0], and [a] (Gao and Shi 2006:19). Even though French is a Romance language of the Indo­

European language family that shares little historical origin with Chinese, nonetheless, four of these nine vowels are shared with Mandarin Chinese (Paul, Simons and Fennig 2015).

15 Gao and Shi (2006) select eight university students: four native French speakers and four

elementary-level French students who are native Chinese speakers. All subjects are recorded while reading a list of twenty French words selected to target the desired vowels in French.

Furthermore, the Chinese subjects also read fourteen single-syllable words to provide two

examples of each vowel.

This study finds that phonetic transfer is present in varying degrees for the various vowels. The French vowels that Chinese students produced most successfully, [ij and [yl, are

products of positive phonetic transfer, as these French vowels are extremely similar to their

Mandarin counterparts (Gao and Shi 2006:20). However, Chinese students struggle more to

produce the other two shared vowels, [aj and [ul, since the realizations of these sounds are

slightly different between these two languages. For instance, the French [aj is characterized by a higher tongue position (lower F 1) than the Mandarin [a], and instead of accounting for this

difference, the Chinese students frequently produce a sound more similar to their native vowel.

Other examples include the French [a], as many of the Chinese subjects incorrectly

produce the more familiar central vowel ['j. These two situations are clear instances of negative transfer. The authors of this study also argue that the Chinese subjects suffer from negative transfer when producing [el, [0], [E j and ["l, as none of these vowels are present in Mandarin.

Nonetheless, it would be useful to see more instances of these mispronunciations to assess whether these errors are as significant as the aforementioned errors and should be classified as

products of negative transfer, or whether the mistakes are less marked and should be seen as

examples of zero transfer.

As with Chen, Xu and Gao (2012), this study is relevant to the present thesis because it finds evidence of language transfer in Chinese learners of French. Given that language transfer

16 occurs between French and Chinese, it is a reasonable hypothesis to assume that this same effect will take place between English and Chinese. Nonetheless, even though English and French are

both Indo-European languages, they are members of different language branches and so the forms of transfer will differ (Paul, Simons and Fennig 2015). In particular, English shares fewer

sounds with Chinese than French does and so the subjects of this thesis will likely experience more negative transfer for this reason.

Furthermore, compared to the subjects of this thesis, the subjects in Chen, Xu & Gao

2012 and Gao & Shi 2006 have lower Mandarin proficiency levels. The subjects in the latter two

studies are beginner students of French, and so may demonstrate more pronunciation errors than

do the intermediate-advanced students of this thesis.

2.5.3 Bassetti (2006)

Bassetti (2006) analyzes the impact of pinyin orthography on learners of Chinese as a foreign

language (CFL). The experiment asks eighteen first-year CFL learners to count the number of

phonemes in various Chinese syllables. Each subject is presented with a list of 35 characters, and must denote for each character the number of "sounds" present in the syllable. This task aims to understand the phonological awareness of native English speaking CFL learners. While some words have a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme relationship (e.g. (you) = [iou]), other words have fewer graphemes than phonemes (e.g. (liu) = [liou]) and are for this reason vulnerable to sound

deletion. Of the 35 characters in the study, 18 are selected to target these rimes (syllable endings) that are prone to having their first vowel deleted. The three rimes in question are [iou], [uen] and

[uei]. The results indeed show that there is a "highly significant main effect of phonology­

orthography consistency" (Bassetti 2005: 104). That is to say that subjects count fewer phonemes

l7 when the pinyin graphemes do not have a one-to-one correspondence with the phonemes of a word.

A follow-up experiment conducts the same task with five new subjects, and asks these

subjects to pronounce the phonemes that they count for each character. This trial corroborates the results from the first experiment that phoneme deletion occurs, and details that the phoneme

deleted is almost always the loudest and longest vowel in the rime (Bassetti 2006: 107).

This study by Bassetti proves that pinyin orthography can negatively influence the

pronunciation of CFL learners even when these speakers are not presented with pinyin. Thus,

since most foreign learners are exposed to pinyin before mastering Chinese phonology, these

speakers will continue to suffer from the ingrained impact of orthography. Bassetti (2006)

discusses phonological factors in her paper and is concerned with phonemic competence, but as

stated in the introduction, this thesis is instead interested in phonetic inventory and the adult

students' ability to hit their targets. Furthermore, while Bassetti (2006) focuses on vowel deletion from triphthongs or three-phoneme rimes, this thesis will further Bassetti's analysis to show that

pinyin orthography also contributes to negative language transfer and errors in monophthong

pronunciation.

3 Methodology

3.1 Test Subjects

This study tracks the pronunciation of four American students-two men and two women-from the Middlebury semester abroad program at Yunnan University in Kunming, China. All four

students were twenty years old at the time of recording, and all were students of Middlebury

College. Each subject began studying Chinese in college and at the time of this study had taken

18 either two or three years of the language, and so each student had reached the intermediate­

advanced level. All of the subjects are native speakers of American English and had no exposure to Mandarin before college. The four subjects come from different locations in the United

States-they respectively live in California, Missouri, Minnesota and New York. While all of the

subjects speak a dialect that is generally consistent with Standard American English, it is worth noting that the subject from Minnesota does have some regional differences in vowels. Finally, while none of the subjects have native fluency in a language other than English, one out of the four had studied French for several years before learning Chinese.

As a control group, this study also tests two fluent speakers of standard Mandarin

Chinese. To demonstrate any effects from gender, the control group also contains one man and

one woman. One subject is a graduate student of Yunnan University, while the other one is a teacher at the Middlebury in Kunming school at Yunnan University. While each of these subjects

can speak other dialects of Chinese, they both grew up speaking standard Northern dialect and

are fluent speakers of this dialect. The program director from Middlebury in Kunming evaluated the control group subjects and verified that they both speak Mandarin with a standard accent.

3.2 Experimental materials

To analyze the main vowels of Chinese, all subjects-both Chinese and American-are asked to read a passage of Mandarin Chinese from Wang and Liu's Kunming Impressions, as seen in

Appendix A. The American students are familiar with this passage because all four are required

5 to study this text for class. Each vowel under study occurs in the passage at least five times , and the first five instances of a vowel are analyzed for their formants. In addition, the four American

5 With the exception of the vowel [1], which only occurs four times in this passage.

19 subjects are also asked to read a series of English words, which elicit five examples of each of the English vowels being tested. Appendix B contains the full list of vowels in question, and the words that subjects recite. Finally, words selected for each vowel and the corresponding formant values are recorded with means and standard deviations in Appendix C.

3.3 Laboratory equipment

All sound files are recorded using a 2012 MacBook Pro internal microphone. This is a potential

limitation of the study, as the recordings take place in school offices in China, as opposed to in a

lab with high-tech microphones. Furthermore, experimental measurement and analysis is

conducted using the software on Praat 5.3.39. Lastly, all tables and figures are created using

Microsoft Excel 201l.

4 Data

4.1 English Vowel Pattern

The vowels elicited in this study form a complete vowel spaces for the four American subjects

containing the following vowels: [i], [I], [£], [re], [u], [0], [a] and [A]. Figure 1 displays the vowel spaces for all four subjects created based on the individual F 1 and F2 values as denoted in

Tables 8-39 (Appendix C). The following description first outlines the general shape of the

English vowel space, then proceeds to provide distinguishing data for the vertex vowel's mean formants, and finally summarizes any anomalous pronunciations specific to each subj ect.

In summary, the four vowels [i], [u], [re] and [a] are vertex vowels that form a

quadrilateral. The vowels [u] and [a] form the back (parallel to the y-axis and to the right) of the

quadrilateral and have relatively similar F2 values. The high vowel [u] is located in the upper

20 right of the vowel space, while [a] is directly beneath it. The low vowel [re] forms the bottom of the quadrilateral with [a], and the bottom of this shape is roughly parallel to the x-axis. The top of the quadrilateral consists of [i] and [u] and is also parallel to the x-axis. Finally, the front of the quadrilateral is a slanted line formed by the connection between [i] and [re], since the former is much further forward and higher up than in the vowel space than the latter.

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 F2 ~----~----~----~----+ 100 F 200 400 u 300 600 500 800 700 re American 1000 American male 1 900 female 1 1200 F1 F1

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 F2 ~----~----~----~----+ 100 F 200

300 400 600 500 800 700 re American 1000 Am e ri can ('tf"'f-t-----1I!~ re 900 female 2 1200 male 2 F1 F1

Figure 1. The English vowel pattern of the four American students.

The remaining four vowels, [I], [c], [u] and [A] are all contained within the quadrilateral formed by the vertex vowels. The vowels [I] and [c] are located approximately on the connecting line between [i] and [re] along the front of the quadrilateral, and [I] is slightly higher than [c l

The back vowel [u] is located just below the high-back vowel [ul The central vowel [A] is basically in between [re] and [a], slightly closer to [a] and a little higher than these two low vowels. These general patterns of shape of the vowel space hold for both men and women.

21 In contrast, the exact fonnant values for each of these vowels varies with gender. In

general, the data shows that women's vowels have higher values for FI and F2. The axes of the

charts in Figure I reflect this fact since the F I values range from 200-1200Hz for women and

100-900Hz for men, and the F2 values similarly range from 500-3000Hz for women and 500-

2500Hz for men. From looking at the mean fonnant values in Table 4, one can see that the women's vowels are typically at least 100-200Hz higher in pitch than the men's vowels.

American American American American male I male 2 female I female 2 FI 280±20 344±9 370±10 423±6 [ i ] F2 2170±100 2330±30 2540±50 2670±30 FI 570±20 610±20 749±8 790±30 [ £ ] F2 1620±40 1680±20 1710±20 1790±50 FI 440±20 506±5 559±8 600±20 [ I ] F2 1840±40 1980±20 1950±40 2050±40 FI 710±20 803±10 866±3 980±20 [ re ] F2 1680±40 1790±30 1590±10 1650±10 FI 600±10 nO±lo 745±7 790±10 [A] F2 1360±80 1320±70 1450±20 1520±50 FI 360±40 370±10 450±10 410±8 [u] F2 1300±100 870±100 1420±30 1400±200 FI 470±20 466±9 560±10 580±10 [ 0 ] F2 1450±100 700±20 1630±30 1640±20 FI 670±30 790±20 840±10 840±30 [ a] F2 1190±60 1140±40 1280±30 1270±20

Table 4. Mean FI and F2 values (in Hz) with standard deviation for the eight English vowels by speaker

Men and women produce the high vowel [i] with F2 values between about 2 100Hz-

2350Hz and 2500Hz-2700Hz, respectively. These values are fairly consistent and the standard

deviation values are relatively low for all four subjects at 100Hz or less. The other high vowel [u]

is generally characterized by an F2 value of around 1300Hz or 1400Hz for both men and women,

although the standard deviation values for these means are higher for every subject except

22 American female 1. For instance, American female 2 has [u] F2 values ranging from between

1400Hz-1800Hz, with an apparent outlier in loon with an F2 as low as 616Hz (Appendix C­

Table 38). American male 2 demonstrates a much lower F2 value for this value and produces the

sound much further back in his mouth with a mean F2 of 870Hz. The low vowel [re] has F2 values between about 1650-1800Hz for men and 1600Hz-1650Hz for women. It is interesting to note that the two male subjects actually produce slightly higher F2 values for [re] than the women. Last, the low vowel [a] has an F2 value around 1150Hz for men and 1275Hz for women.

While each subject claims to not use the vowel [0] as part of his or her own dialect, several of the

instances of [a] for American male 2 and American female 2 are too high and appear to actually

be examples of[ 0].

The patterns of vowel space for these four American speakers are fairly consistent with

each other; however American male 2 and American female 2 do demonstrate more variation

and anomalous pronunciations. American male 2 most notably demonstrates a high range in F2 values for [u], and a position further back in the mouth for both [u] and [0] than the other

speakers. As mentioned above, American female 2 has one instance of [u] that appears to be an

outlier, and also pronounces [a] much higher in the vowel space than do the other speakers.

4.2 Mandarin Vowel Pattern by Native Speakers

To contrast with the English vowels of section 4.1, this section moves on to describe the vowel

pattern of native Chinese speakers for the seven main vowels outlined by this study: [i], [y], [1.1,

[1], [,], [u] and [a]. The vowels spaces for the two native Chinese speakers can be found in

Figure 2. The individual data for these charts can be found in Tables 40-53 in Appendix C.

23 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 F2 100 F 200

400 u 300 600 500 800 Chinese 700 1000 male Chinese female 1200 F1 900 F1 Figure 2. The Mandarin vowel pattern of the two Chinese subjects.

In summary, unlike the quadrilateral formed by the English vowels, the three vertex vowels of Chinese ([i], [u] and [a]) roughly form an isosceles triangle. The male and female subjects respectively produce high vowels [i] with F2 values ranging roughly between 2100Hz-

2300Hz and 2500Hz-2700Hz; for the high vowel [u], the F2 values vary between about 900Hz-

1100Hz; the Fl of [a] ranges respectively between 600Hz-800Hz and 800Hz-1000Hz. This low vowel [a] is located significantly lower than the other vowels. The high vowels [y], [[J and [1] are located approximately in line between [i] and [u], where they are horizontally arranged in order of [y], [[J, then [1]. All three of these vowels rest nearer to the front vowel [i] than to the back vowel [u]. Finally, the central vowel [1'] is in the middle of the vowel space, with a scattered position.

Overall, the Mandarin vowels demonstrate a wider spread ofF2 values than the English vowels do, ranging from 870-2170Hz for the male subj ect and 81 0-2680Hz for the female subject (Table 5). However, the spread ofFl values is much smaller, with most vowels except for the low vowel [a] having a similar Fl value that ranges from roughly 400-500 Hz.

24 Chinese Chinese male female F1 670±10 960±40 [ a] F2 1380±60 1620±50 F1 390±10 410±20 [ u ] F2 870±40 810±40 F1 380±10 403±10 [ i ] F2 2170±40 2680±20 F1 330±10 460±20 [ Y ] F2 1940±30 2540±50 F1 530±20 590±20 [ ,] F2 141D±40 1700±50 F1 380±8 430±20 [L] F2 1760±40 2240±50 F1 410±5 520±20 [ 1] F2 1500±20 1740±80

Table 5. Mean F1 and F2 values (in Hz) with standard deviation for the seven Mandarin vowels by the two native speakers

It is interesting to note that the two vowels that Mandarin shares with English do not necessarily have the same expression in terms of their formants. The front vowel [i] is remarkably similar between Mandarin and English, with F 1 and F2 values for the native

Mandarin speakers lining up perfectly within the established range for English vowels. One would expect this vowel to benefit from positive transfer for the American students. On the other

hand, the Mandarin [u] is located significantly further back in the vowel space than the English

[ul, with F2 values clearly below 1000Hz for Mandarin, whereas the English [u] F2 values were

up around 1300-1400Hz. This should result in a clear instance of negative transfer.

4.3 Mandarin Vowel Pattern by American Students

The Mandarin vowel spaces for the American subjects can be seen in Figure 3. Comparing

Figures 2 and 3 reveals the main errors present in the vowel pronunciation of the American

25 subjects. Furthermore, a comparison of Figure 1 and Figure 3 helps to trace the causes of these errors. The data for these figures can be found in Tables 54-81 in Appendix C.

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 F2 L-____~ ____~ ____~ ____+ 100 F2 200

300 400 600 500 800 700 American 1000 American male 1 900 female 1 F1 F1 1200

2500 2000 1500 1000 500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 F2 100 F2 200 y 400 300 y 600 500 800 700 American 1000 American male 2 900 female 2 F1 F1 1200

Figure 3. The Mandarin vowel pattern of the four American students.

The greatest similarity between the second-language learners of Mandarin and the native speakers is the triangular shape of the vowel space. The overall shapes are very similar, and the vertex vowels, [i], [u] and [a], do connect as expected to form a roughly isosceles triangle. In addition, the horizontal sequence of high vowels is also essentially correct because it follows the anticipated order: [i], [y], [tJ, [1], then [ul

Despite similarities between native and non-native speakers, there are also several prominent errors in the speech of the American subjects. First, when the American students pronounce the high vowel [u], the vowel is generally too far too the front. As hypothesized, negative transfer takes place with the Mandarin [u], as mean F2 values are as high as 1080Hz for

26 American male I and 1200Hz for American female 2. This vowel should be further back with F2 values closer to 800Hz. Nonetheless, American male 2 and American female I actually

pronounce the Mandarin [u] correctly, with mean F2 values of 820Hz and 750Hz, respectively

(Table 6).

American American American American male I male 2 female I female 2 FI 768±8 739±10 930±30 850±30 [ a] F2 1300±10 1330±20 1500±20 1510±20 FI 320±4 340±20 330±20 430±20 [u] F2 1080±40 820±60 750±40 1200±20 FI 320±20 340±20 350±10 440±20 [ i ] F2 2070±20 2280±90 2510±50 2300±30 FI 260±1O 299±8 350±10 362±4 [y] F2 2070±50 2110±70 2330±80 2650±50 FI 600±1O 571±8 690±10 550±60 [, ] F2 1520±30 1490±20 1550±40 1800±90 FI 378±6 440±20 488±4 480±1O [L] F2 1610±40 1670±40 1820±30 1870±30 FI 430±20 433±7 510±50 510±30 [ 1] F2 1200±30 1550±40 1190±50 1580±10 Table 6. Mean FI and F2 values (m Hz) with standard deviatIOn for the seven Mandarin vowels by the four non-native speakers

When the American students pronounce the high vowel [iJ, there are two different

phenomena: One, they pronounce it correctly; or two, the value of F2 is too low and the vowel is

located too far back. As a result, students sometimes pronounce [i] more like the [1] vowel of

English, as when American male 2 pronounces jing [~ilJ] with an F2 value as low as 2000

(Appendix C-Table 63).

When students pronounce the low vowel [aJ, the biggest mistake is that the vowel is

pronounced too far back in the mouth. The mean F2 values of these vowels for the non-native

27 spe4

F!-onounang the high vowel [y]-which should have an F2 value around 2000Hl; formm

or 2S OOHz for womell--ls expecte dly more dllli.cult for the Amencans, and the students exlubll thre e main errors whm produ cing this vowel. Cbe, the ,tudents produce ahigh vowel [y] thati, too far b~k ",d has arel!tively low value ofF2, as ~th Ammc", female 2 ~th th e promlllCllllOn ofyu C"-'to educ!te') that has", F2 val ue of 2055Hz (Table 71) Conversely, th e second phmomenon th

WIll be to 0 lugh TIus effect ISmilnly sem m the vowel chart 0 f Amencan female 2, who pronounc es the afu remmti oned yu with '" F2 value of 2766Hz. The last kind of error m th e pro duction 0 f [yJ IS th!t the student begms with the correct pronunCl !tion [y J, but after a short

dur!tion the fo tm irlt, ,hift ",d the vowel become, '" [u] (Figure 4). Thus, the overall result IS th

example 0 fthis error is shown below m the spectrognm of Figure 4

Fi gure 3 does not demonstr

at the pomt mo st resembling the correct vowel The four Amenc!ll sub) eCIS do produce steady monophthongs fo r mo st of the vowels m thi s study, ",d 00 Fi gure 3 IS still an oc cur

abnormal dIphthong

Figure 4 Amenc!ll female two's diphthonglzed production ofyu- [ y J '10 educ!te' As desired, the subjects' F2 value for [1.1 is higher than that for [1], and the two vowels

are located in the middle of the triangular vowel space. Thus, these two vowels are basically

correct, although they are located slightly further back than the same vowels for Chinese

speakers. The vowel [1.1 should be around 1750Hz for men and 2250Hz for women, but the

American men and women respectively produce vowels with mean F2 values closer to 1650Hz

and 1850Hz. This difference for women is especially great. The vowel [1] should be produced with mean F2 values around 1500Hz for men and 1650-1850Hz for women. Only American male 2 demonstrates this pattern with a mean F2 value of 1550Hz. The remaining three subjects have vowels that are too far back in the vowel space.

Finally, with the exception of American woman 2, there are no obvious errors when the

American students pronounce the central vowel [,]. Nonetheless, the distribution of this vowel for American woman 2 is very large and the standard deviations of the means for both formants

are quite large at 60Hz and 90Hz-given that her classmates had much smaller standard

deviation values (the next largest was American female l's 40Hz).

5 Results

Nearly all of the errors described in sub-section 4.3 are evidence of negative phonetic transfer.

Furthermore, positive phonetic transfer also explains the correct pronunciations. This section

attempts to trace the transfer occurring for the four subjects in each of the vowels.

Even though [u] is present in both English and Chinese, the pronunciations of this one vowel are clearly different between the languages. Thus, this discrepancy in the data is probably

due to the fact that the English vowel [u] is positioned further toward the front of the vowel

29 space than the same vowel in Chinese, so negative phonetic transfer in this situation affects the

students.

Thus, it may seem surprising that American male 2 and American female 1 would

pronounce this correctly. Nevertheless, it was already established that American male 1 has

somewhat anomalous productions of [u] in English, so this similar instance in Chinese is not too unexpected. For American female 1 to have the correct pronunciation is indeed more surprising,

and suggests that she may have overcome the impact of negative phonetic transfer.

In terms of the incorrect pronunciations of [i], because the English letter (i) often represents [I], the American subjects may see the Pinyin (i) ([i]) and mistakenly pronounce it [I].

In fact, as seen in Table 7, the (i) as the only written vowel in a nucleus in English rarely represents the phone [i], even though this isolated sound, as the complete nucleus of a syllable, is

in fact present in English. This is one of the most compelling arguments for orthographic

influences on language transfer because [i] is the only sound that is shared between Mandarin

and English (as mentioned above, [u] has different vowel expressions in English and Chinese).

Thus, given that Americans already know how to pronounce this sound, this should be a clear

case of positive transfer. The fact that these four subjects occasionally mispronounce this vowel

provides persuasive evidence that there must be some factor other than relative vowel difference that leads to this phenomenon.

Table 7 clearly demonstrates this incongruous relationship between orthographic representation and vowel expression for Chinese and English. Again, the case of (i) is most

compelling as it is the only vowel without other elements contributing to language transfer.

However, having used the above example to prove the impact of orthographic representations, we can extend this analysis to various other letters. Table 7 reveals that the only letters with

30 shared vowel between Chinese and English are (i) and (u), and yet the latter vowel does not even have a shared sound expression in these languages. It is therefore reasonable to hypothesize that

orthographic input is also a legitimate factor in language transfer for the rest of the vowels in this

study.

English English Orthographic Mandarin Example word vowel Representation vowel pinyin 'sat' [re] 'palm' [a] (a) [ a] 'sa' 'sate' rell 'set' [E] (e) [,] 'she' 'she' ri 1 'sing' [i] [i] 'hi' 'sit' [I] (i) [1] 'ci' 'sight' [aI] [LJ 'shi'

'spot' [a] (0) [uo] 'rno' 'prune' [u] [u] 'shu' 'put' [0] (u) [y] 'xu' 'putt' rAl N/A N/A (ii) [y] 'Iii ' Table 7. The vanous vowel expressIOns given a specific orthographic representatIOn. The left side of the table demonstrates the various vowels that result from the English letter used as the only written vowel in a nucleus, with example English words. The right side similarly shows Mandarin vowels that would result from the given pinyin letter, also with an example word.

In fact, this is indeed the case with the low vowel [a]. When students pronounce this vowel the biggest mistake is that the vowel is articulated too far back in the mouth, producing a

sound more like the English [a]. Table 7 again shows that the low vowels [aJ, [re] and [a] are all represented by the same letter in English writing and Mandarin pinyin ((a)). The Chinese vowel

[a] should have an F2 value in between [re] and [a J, and yet the American students frequently err

and pronounce an [a] instead of an [a].

The error characterized by [y] pronounced too far back stems mainly from the fact that

English does not have this vowel. Arguably the most similar English vowel is the high, back

31 vowel [u], in that these two vowels only differ in the frontness of the tongue. One could also

argue that the vowel [i] that is present in English (and Chinese) is much more similar to [y] since

it differs only in lip rounding, which is a characteristic that is easier to change than tongue

position. While this argument is true from an articulatory standpoint, it overlooks the impact of

orthographic representations. Since the pinyin (u) represents the two vowels [u] and [y] in

Chinese (Table 7), this orthographic representation once again impacts the perception of these two vowels and their similarities.

The instances of [y] pronounced too far forward, as with American female 2, are

presumably the result of negative transfer cause by lack of a similar sound. If a native English

speaker does not note the similarities between either [u] and [y] or [i] and [y], this may result in this anomalous pronunciation.

The production of the diphthong [yu] instead of the monophthong [u] only reinforces the

concept that the aforementioned impact of phonetic transfer exists. Even when a speaker begins with the correct articulation, he or she is not immune to regressing back to the more familiar

pronunciation present in his or her native language.

Given that the American subjects seem to have less difficulty pronouncing the apical vowels [LJ and [1], and since English does not have these two vowels-nor does it have any vowels that are similar in tongue position-this case appears to be a rare occasion of zero transfer.

Although [,] has marked variation even for native Chinese speakers, American female 2

seems to be impacted by negative transfer from English because the distribution of this vowel is very scattered. Given the information in table 7, it would make sense that she seems to

sometimes pronounce a vowel more similar to [£], [0] or [A] rather than [,].

32 In conclusion, the four subjects all demonstrate the effects of negative phonetic transfer

and have clear errors in pronunciation. Nonetheless, the American students demonstrate different

levels of pronunciation accuracy. In particular, American female 2 struggles more to produce native-like vowel pronunciation and exhibits more errors in language production than the other three subjects.

In contrast, American female I excels at this task and presented the most accurate

pronunciations. While she still demonstrates errors in certain vowels, it appears that she is least

impacted by language transfer. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that American female I was the only subj ect to have studied a foreign language before Chinese. Her background in French-studied after the adolescent critical period-may have primed her and facilitated the learning of typically difficult vowels such as [y] (which is also present in French).

One weakness of this argument is that this subject would still have to overcome language transfer effects to correctly pronounce the French vowel [y], and so this process would not

necessarily be any easier than had she not known French. Another explanation is that there are

possible methods to diminish the impacts of negative phonetic transfer. The following section

expands upon this reasoning.

6 Discussion

In summary, the American students make several notable mistakes when pronouncing the main

Chinese vowels, and so it is clear that negative transfer is occurring. The most compelling piece

of evidence for negative transfer is the pronunciation error present in words with the pinyin (i), which proves that the orthographic input of pinyin representations can contribute to negative

phonetic transfer.

33 However, as stated above in the discussion, the four American subjects in this study

exhibited varying degrees of success in the learning of the Mandarin phonetic system. This

indicates that even after a human has passed through the critical developmental period for second

language learning described by the Critical Age Hypothesis, he or she need not necessarily

succumb to the impact of negative transfer. There must be some means of moderating these

detrimental effects.

An area of potential future research is studying the subjects who excel in studies similar to this one and identifying common factors between these individuals. However, in the meantime, what course of action can students and language educators take to reduce the effects of negative transfer due to orthographic inputs? Should these groups abandon the use of pinyin altogether?

No, despite pinyin's role in negative phonetic transfer, it is still an immensely useful tool for

language learners.

The problem is not pinyin itself, but rather the early exposure to pinyin before the mastery of the Mandarin phonetic system. Thus, the goal is to encourage learning of phonetics without relying too heavily on pinyin. One concrete change that could help achieve these ends is to incorporate basic lessons on phonetics with explicit discussion of the potential graphemic

interference in the pedagogy of introductory courses. Ideally learners should view pinyin as a tool to help learn the phonetics, and should avoid conflating the representation of the pinyin

grapheme with the same letters in their native writing system. This simple change to pedagogy has the potential to drastically improve Mandarin pronunciation for learners before the

detrimental impacts of negative transfer become ingrained in their speech and pronunciation.

34 Appendix A

Each subject is recorded once reading the following passage from Wang and Liu (2014: 45). The subjects are presented with a clean, un-annotated version of the characters of the text. The pinyin and approximate English translation are presented here for reference.

Characters:

"ji:i3(:)(iJ'fJ7<'f* i~ ilifF::f ~~~1Kfilt~ B'J IllG *lfm······ Hsz. yf!l A mIJ\ tzo J1t, Z:A m

tp ili~iS:i'¥-; Hsz. ~ aJj tzoJ1t, :j~...tr- B'JH'H5L ili~::f $ 0 is:i'¥- B'J~ lPiiU5L::f11l'::f i.l:flt1r'l ,\!l,~:

ffl~~~*ffl~m~~$~~~~~iS:i'¥-~"ji:~m~m~~?iS:.m::f~~#_*~~~

O,&? is:~flt1IT~J"if1fB'J;fi'f:iJ'i:O,&? tp 00 B'J~~ ¥Um;)IIZ *11PJJ~~:1f~!E? Pinyin: Xue xiao dui yu hai zi lai shuo bing bu shi yi ge hen jian kang de cheng zhang huan jing ... bu jin shi da fu xiao ru ci, yun da ru zhong ye shi zhe yang; bu jin kun ming ru ci, bei shang guang de qing kuang ye cha bu duo. Zhe yang de jiao yu zhuang kuang bu de bu rang wo men si kao: yong mai yi ge jia yong jing ji jiao che de jia qian huan qu zhe yang de xue xi fen wei zhi de rna? Zhe nan dao bus hi yi zhongji xing de jiao yu rna? Zhe shi wo men yao pei yang de jing ying rna? Zhong guo jiao yu dao di ying gai wang na ge fang xiang zou? English: With regard to children, schools are definitely not very healthy development environments ... Not only [is this the case with] the elementary school attached to Yunnan Normal University, the middle school attached to Yunnan University is the same; not only [is this the case with] Kunming, but Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou's situations are all about the same. This kind of education situation inevitably forces us to think: Is it worth it to exchange the amount of money needed to buy an economy family car for this kind of academic atmosphere? Is this not a kind of deformed education system? Are these the elites we want to raise? In what direction should China's education system actually move?

35 Appendix B

Each American student is required to read a list of forty different words, with five iterations for each of the Standard American English main vowels, in the order as follows:

[i]- sheep, sleep, she, seep, scene

[1]- ship, this, sit, shit, knit

[s]- set, session, shepherd, sent, chef

[re]- sat, shat, that, shack, sash

[A]- shut, slut, thus, sunk, hunk

[u]- soup, shoot, soon, loon, prune

[0] -hood, should, good, soot, sugar

[a] - hostile, saw, thought, saucy, shop

36 Appendix C

Tables 8-81 demonstrate the first and second formants for the vowels of various main vowels. The vowel in question in listed in the top left of the table, while the specific word in question (written in either pinyin or standard English) is listed in the left column. The first half (Tables 8- 39) contains all the English vowels, while the latter half (Tables 40-81) contains all the Mandarin vowels. The specific speaker is listed above the tables in question.

English Vowels: American Male 1:

Ii] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) lie] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) sheep 250.855568 2148.091526 sat 702.6383074 1714.659371 sleep 292.5537195 2067.468285 shat 735.1630486 1706.386967 she 274.055189 2156.171527 that 681.4845339 1635.108617 seep 261.62997 2139.937321 shack 704.0455624 1707.511813 scene 305.9767996 2336.282047 sash 729.3661179 1630.384315 Mean 277.0142492 2169.590141 Mean 710.539514 1678.810217 s.e. 22.41658511 99.67021172 s.e. 21.84920943 42.2028388 mean±s.e. 280±20 2170±100 mean±s.e. 71O±20 1680±40 Table 8 Table 9

[I] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) IE] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) ship 420.6398529 1870.684452 set 572.6923742 1666.669411 this 453.8930894 1823.715832 session 542.8832017 1576.635521 sit 440.8698756 1775.358871 shepherd 576.8685591 1580.533651 shit 410.5940546 1857.358627 sent 587.2730885 1648.739019 knit 462.2280124 1848.874444 chef 570.697944 1602.581338 Mean 437.644977 1835.198445 Mean 570.0830335 1615.031788 s.e. 21.79250677 37.58320213 s.e. 16.49665854 40.68792812 mean±s.e. 440±20 1840±40 mean±s.e. 570±20 1620±40 Table 10 Table II

37 [A] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) shut 613.3486161 1411.987459 hood 502.5734667 1346.360661 slut 599.3652475 1455.547501 should 468.7556116 1466.911834 thus 579.6156236 1365.025253 good 457.9948001 1444.840503 sunk 606.9236743 1320.637523 soot 461. 6454185 1376.329999 hunk 610.879358 1245.801475 sugar 435.4741675 1591.48457 Mean 602.0265039 1359.799842 Mean 465.2886929 1445.185513 s.e. 13. 60032508 81.31386926 s.e. 24.27732548 95.37164058 mean±s.e. 600±10 1360±80 mean±s.e. 470±20 1450±100 Table 12 Table 13

[u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [a] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) soup 333.9281456 1421.210401 hostile 686.6303487 1160.752806 shoot 300.3410016 1345.575891 saw 673.7158329 1122.149452 soon 389.1535822 1190.017014 thought 657.4447079 1159.944212 loon 357.3097891 1236.573043 saucy 634.9643893 1232.695839 prune 411.0504383 1413.693717 shop 699.234896 1257.234467 Mean 358.3565914 1321.414013 Mean 670.398035 1186.555355 s.e. 43.84275756 104.3094204 s.e. 25.14653192 56.22838669 mean±s.e. 360±40 1300±100 mean±s.e. 670±30 1190±60 Table 14 Table 15

American male 2:

[i] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [I] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) sheep 329.207543 2335.344872 ship 496.6745326 1986.391221 sleep 350.5759704 2283.851518 this 497.3990153 1949.111781 she 328.9025258 2347.891722 sit 507.6220829 1914.651847 seep 335.7820249 2249.732904 shit 503.6708488 2011.388243 scene 376.0269987 2450.402835 knit 522.1683793 2017.882276 Mean 344.0990125 2333.44477 Mean 505.5069718 1975.885074 s.e. 8.897214851 34.17505004 s.e. 4.632485734 19.49478965 mean±s.e. 344±9 2330±30 mean±s.e. 506±5 1980±20 Table 16 Table 17

38 [E] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) set 652.3552979 1737.80389 soup 337.209515 926.309364 session 613.1128537 1694.065679 shoot 338.2934421 1199.426757 shepherd 588.3954856 1638.08656 soon 381.8005201 656.0956167 sent 574.0883234 1650.085977 loon 374.3116472 828.9748491 prune 406.5671161 706.1442306 chef 644.1530025 1681.603338 Mean 367.6364481 863.3901635 Mean 614.4209926 1680.329089 s.e. 13.31838276 96.37456729 s.e. 15.21309695 17.59651589 mean+s.e. 370+10 870+100 610+20 1680+20 mean±s.e. Table 19 Table 18 [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) riel hood 492.5862036 773.3636989 sat 820.4672026 1845.352169 should 444.7362309 663.4172347 shat 829.9443482 1741.235866 good 479.033217 664.6824801 that 773.7053861 1854.540714 soot 462.6071783 711.402417 shat2 793.3036982 1718.327126 sugar 450.7780567 684.4566396 sash 799.6815153 1811.951819 Mean 465.9481773 699.464494 Mean 803.4204301 1794.281539 s.e. 8.865788772 20.41817275 s.e. 9.983542142 27.5086645 mean+s.e. 466+9 700+20 803+10 1790+30 mean±s.e. Table 21 Table 20 [a] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [A] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) hostile 823.4 788425 1216.171919 shut 748.498377 1441.918574 saw 713.5365901 1000.449271 slut 697.3103827 1414.750492 thought 790.3730658 1141.353355 thus 725.5458744 1353.634283 sunk 719.402038 1327.464847 saucy 807.0926532 1141.540981 hunk 684.9226979 1075.638637 shop 808.3683804 1179.733126 Mean 715.135874 1322.681367 Mean 788.5699064 1135.84973 s.e. 11.1135256 65.07891762 s.e. 19.47685227 36.5878197 mean±s.e. 720+10 1320+70 mean+s.e. 790+20 1140+40 Table 22 Table 23

39 American Female 1:

[i] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [A] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) sheep 395.9368829 2526.671302 shut 757.6409084 1538.14502 sleep 417.5471893 2378.603916 slut 735.1276254 1462.290067 she 348.0612633 2517.237596 thus 736.9483027 1449.818316 seep 342.6068891 2542.544497 sunk 730.0825425 1415.25503 scene 361.6513147 2720.841052 hunk 766.5434567 1422.89233 Mean 373.1607079 2537.179672 Mean 745.2685671 1457.680153 s.e. 14.46529982 54.50443387 s.e. 7.100621795 21.87205791 mean±s.e. 370±10 2540±50 mean±s.e. 745±7 1450±20 Table 24 Table 25

[E] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) set 755.8293407 1769.326069 soup 433.0842027 1478.915626 session 758.3881704 1676.639738 shoot 407.9857921 1491.303614 shepherd 724.9862604 1751.181336 soon 440.4722133 1398.405675 sent 736.7372088 1685.334198 loon 470.6547652 1321.666665 prune 481.8341945 1393.942801 chef 769.8657422 1657.448616 Mean 446.8062335 1416.846876 Mean 749.1613445 1707.985991 s.e. 13.28749625 31.08076793 s.e. 8.053143529 21.99790955 mean±s.e. 450±10 1420±30 mean±s.e. 749±8 1710±20 Table 27 Table 26 [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [I] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) hood 600.6540208 1597.26369 ship 548.4977093 2028.529915 should 548.9487619 1700.376389 this 590.0327144 1914.187403 good 547.9785266 1566.572734 sit 552.9999902 1854.424372 soot 563.7535052 1580.067936 shit 549.8811577 1925.107235 sugar 522.7248279 1690.027613 knit 553.2513183 2042.398118 Mean 556.8119285 1626.861672 Mean 558.932578 1952.929409 s.e. 12.79082356 28.36793967 s.e. 7.827852473 35.84574256 mean±s.e. 560±10 1630±30 mean±s.e. 559±8 1950±40 Table 29 Table 28

40 la] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) lie] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) hostile 876.1534102 1312.03758 sat 858.6917363 1563.684067 saw 798.8471981 1214.988075 shat 860.8785925 1636.6673 thought 834.1286865 1202.370999 that 867.4735387 1564.510142 saucy 831. 5465654 1305.505711 shack 865.8103741 1603.433396 shop 843.0262373 1368.661456 sash 874.7496981 1605.106879 Mean 836.7404195 1280.712764 Mean 865.5207879 1594.680357 s.e. 12.37454814 31.45478797 s.e. 2.804066707 13.81890614 mean±s.e. 840±10 1280±30 mean±s.e. 866±3 1590±1O Table 30 Table 31

American Female 2:

Ii] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) lie] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) sheep 428.0998488 2611.597379 sat 995.4997976 1665.103707 sleep 433.7204405 2589.811933 shat 945.5074433 1607.377975 she 399.3390461 2691.832866 that 965.2251954 1624.35857 seep 434.3831487 2732.196067 shack 953.6817851 1685.637505 scene 421. 6501052 2726.357385 sash 1040.669885 1661. 784358 Mean 423.4385179 2670.359126 Mean 980.1168213 1648.852423 s.e. 6.446758262 29.46313544 s.e. 17.35178693 14.32578114 mean±s.e. 423±6 2670±30 mean±s.e. 980±20 1650±1O Table 32 Table 33

[I] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) IE] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) ship 574.0423261 2133.883456 set 867.639493 1868.026414 this 591. 9352328 1952.097499 session 838.7592231 1861.24092 sit 563.3478833 2056.116116 shepherd 756.2648134 1615.294172 shit 574.9964808 1967.670898 sent 755.6685002 1818.49422 knit 695.9494579 2148.16204 chef 745.3353332 1790.149417 Mean 600.0542762 2051.586002 Mean 792.7334726 1790.641029 s.e. 24.40663709 40.6571216 s.e. 25.17899968 46.09523004 mean±s.e. 600±20 2050±40 mean±s.e. 790±30 1790±50 Table 34 Table 35

41 [AI F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [ul F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) shut 805.2067196 1666.591499 hood 606.2067591 1629.371701 slut 818.2144551 1535.075063 should 596.6786583 1617.61241 thus 778.4392609 1580.651869 good 556.90904 1630.184084 sunk 764.1017094 1380.022333 soot 586.5420352 1604.625401 sugar 534.58535 1711.41928 hunk 807.4326006 1443.685564 Mean 576.1843685 1638.642575 Mean 794.6789491 1521.205265 s.e. 13. 28656792 18.7794833 s.e. 10.06505013 50.4010672 mean±s.e. 580+10 1640+20 790+10 1520+50 mean±s.e. Table 37 Table 36 [al F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [ul F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) hostile 934.8234047 1365.786752 soup 417.0991135 1638.953644 saw 788.5975596 1248.238023 shoot 400.2635467 1770.692688 thought 795.0701636 1228.805064 soon 425.9150333 1419.834771 saucy 795.7492864 1242.616046 loon 385.4828743 616.3534044 shop 897.9150724 1257.312883 prune 421. 2134404 1506.215657 Mean 842.4310973 1268.551754 Mean 409.9948017 1390.410033 s.e. 30.76939166 24.74476222 7.501049217 202.4634839 s.e. mean+s.e. 840+30 1270+20 mean+s.e. 410+8 1400+200 Table 39 Table 38

42 Chinese vowels:

Chinese male:

[a] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) kang 666.030246 1225.742709 yu 300.1710764 1939.083895 zhang 631.2007557 1354.752582 yun 360.0851379 2033.578927 da 701.0229255 1504.262717 yu 329.8697212 1884.402125 da 698.7660548 1531.339375 qu 332.8349151 1907.896375 yang 666.573938 1307.375556 yu 347.3859809 1912.855128 Mean 672. 718784 1384.694588 Mean 334.0693663 1935.56329 s.e. 12.81761891 58.28451217 s.e. 10.05586282 25.99811854 mean±s.e. 670±10 1380±60 mean±s.e. 330±10 1940±30 Table 40 Table 41

[i] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bing 403.6451642 2301.459868 ge 508.4624827 1278.290916 yi 337.0232308 2106.353732 de 586.8306838 1360.810442 jing 406.9605921 2142.08959 de 546.7538935 1487.433214 jin 374.2520969 2203.690685 de 516.2145055 1499.797829 jin 383.9428373 2096.582532 che 485.7328631 1432.087967 Mean 381.1647843 2170.035282 Mean 528.7988857 1411.684074 s.e. 12.59914828 37.83960618 s.e. 17.4881247 41.41264659 mean±s.e. 380±10 2170±40 mean±s.e. 530±20 141O±40 Table 42 Table 43

[u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [1] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bu 362.7415518 767.8165184 zi 407.3308319 1564.250523 bu 427.7503737 852.0323485 ci 425.3322984 1522.782825 ru 395.2041818 1009.716892 ci 407.0493801 1467.884894 fu 386.8195957 820.7335517 si 399.4848902 1460.093903 bu 386.8682043 894.4723826 Mean 409.7993501 1503.753036 Mean 391.8767815 868.9543386 s.e. 4.907928851 21.93129023 s.e. 10.48214862 40.80791817 mean±s.e. 41O±5 1500±20 mean±s.e. 390±10 870±40 Table 45 Table 44

43 [ll F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) shi 400.2433262 1882.950384 shi 387.3452989 1801.178167 shi 359.9356553 1704.001033 zhi 363.7971764 1743.0304 shi 389.060381 1688.039036 Mean 380.0763675 1763.839804 s.e. 7.781119566 35.59561068 mean±s.e. 380±8 1760±40 Table 46

Chinese female:

[a] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) kang 885.7459742 1504.29035 bu 354.4967364 715.4020959 zhang 983.9560282 1486.46141 bu 369.7685124 773.6815231 da 1058.735652 1765.129543 fu 475.1188219 924.5585104 da 1010.390673 1674.299422 ru 391.4144565 793.393417 yang 862.1696586 1659.945534 fu 441.8790452 861.9443739 Mean 960.1995971 1618.025252 Mean 406.5355145 813.795984 s.e. 37.38052766 53.2956083 s.e. 22.62888473 36.25837603 mean±s.e. 960±40 1620±50 mean±s.e. 41O±20 81O±40 Table 47 Table 48

[i] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bing 383.1341758 2630.040498 yu 430.6925047 2425.17607 yi 414.3667513 2751.234578 yun 434.5756526 2679.145609 jing 423.2396609 2695.680408 yu 453.1762214 2483.675662 jin 376.1761222 2653.839217 qu 429.4638873 2615.772856 jin 420.5543816 2694.134479 yu 549.0791831 2505.575942 Mean 403.4942184 2684.985836 Mean 459.3974898 2541.869228 s.e. 9.899377142 20.70757039 s.e. 22.82282918 46.16683756 mean±s.e. 403±10 2680±20 mean±s.e. 460±20 2540±50 Table 49 Table 50

44 [1] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) III F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) zi 576.211909 1963.895494 shi 456.6359596 2108.989971 ci 505.3989272 1768.348409 shi 494.8416638 2202.631887 ci 466.5106612 1742.640623 shi 377.5530355 2184.046195 si 544.1950966 1502.642685 zhi 448.8235089 2327.749519 shi 363.8870253 2378.863715 Mean 523.0791485 1744.381803 Mean 428.3482386 2240.456257 s.e. 21.26273341 84.53854798 s.e. 24.87590011 49.33198795 mean±s.e. 520±20 1740±80 mean±s.e. 430±20 2240±50 Table 51 Table 52

Iv] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) ge 562.742613 1598.312488 de 663.4 766883 1790.201675 de 596.4392447 1856.284586 che 544.6861968 1674.872086 de 568.8772636 1581.88758 Mean 587.2444013 1700.311683 s.e. 20.79037864 53.61111551 mean±s.e. 590±20 1700±50 Table 53

American Male 1:

la] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) Ii] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) kang 739.2829335 1237.374334 bing 372. 713328 2017.723314 zhang 768.9635961 1349.48471 yi 285.8751491 2082.358891 da 632.198816 1356.543367 jing 385.179911 2049.280058 da 780.9382911 1405.088801 jin 285.4464114 2106.175877 yang 780.8197132 1420.083929 jin 283.4215965 2069.807868 Mean 740.44067 1353.715028 Mean 322.5272792 2065.069201 s.e. 28.10846942 32.09762288 s.e. 23.12100299 15.00346161 mean±s.e. 768±8 1300±1O mean±s.e. 320±20 2070±20 Table 54 Table 55

45 [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [1] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bu 330.873853 1114.869433 zi 472.577174 1240.979738 bu 315.8840294 1077.6803 ci 457.4026914 1134.039778 fu 314.4275168 1203.94768 ci 421.0408842 1145.156179 ru 308.951653 1047.67801 si 373.5278059 1285.827497 329.1855301 940.5806002 fu Mean 431.1371389 1201.500798 Mean 319.8645165 1076.951205 s.e. 19.71112268 33.06083697 s.e. 4.316147682 43.02341812 mean±s.e. 430±20 1200+30 mean+s.e. 320+4 1080+40 Table 56 Table 57

[v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [ll F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) yu 305.8879565 2021.775402 shi 392.5208798 1534.0733 yu 248.8545514 2171.233507 shi 361.246566 1735.242904 qu 229.5392157 1898.743765 shi 379.8232618 1652.235527 yu 272.9212726 2148.586071 zhi 369.664952 1622.602214 yun 264.5153925 2131.648717 shi 386.0734584 1492.191495 Mean 264.3436777 2074.397492 Mean 377.8658236 1607.269088 s.e. 12.74910845 50.88328699 s.e. 5.609908755 43.14791925 mean+s.e. 260+10 2070+50 mean+s.e. 780+6 1610+40 Table 58 Table 59

[v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) ge 510.9003469 1584.713052 de 463.5471215 1540.197699 de 428.3128293 1432.079139 de 475.7555567 1537.607421 de 444.8468662 1484.321366 Mean 595.13187 1515.783735 s.e. 14.09999267 26.28678926 mean+s.e. 600+10 1520+30 Table 60

46 American Male 2:

[a] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) kang 755.173501 1376.103911 yu 267.9050239 2222.147642 zhang 701.6478719 1331.975647 yun 312.8025962 2053.503786 da 742.5713174 1393.918227 yu 312.4246996 2298.876056 da 753.3988219 1265.133947 qu 297.2434746 1879.213025 yang 740.7024195 1290.982766 yu 303.5881249 2120.098298 Mean 738.6987864 1331.622899 Mean 298.7927839 2114.767762 s.e. 9.693525086 24.42518573 s.e. 8.250919167 72.35123561 mean±s.e. 739±10 1330±20 mean±s.e. 299±8 2110±70 Table 61 Table 62

[i] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bing 344.9930835 2147.029432 ge 598.3181911 1501.300174 yi 286.7944341 2345.975794 de 567.7276482 1454.699976 jing 396.7869438 2007.961814 de 560.0907699 1490.938192 jin 330.0488333 2441.749241 de 554.65716 1417.541741 jin 336.6626371 2462.362477 de 576.3895099 1565.190068 Mean 339.0571864 2281.015752 Mean 571.4366558 1485.93403 s.e. 17.58726716 88.16248725 s.e. 7.652401739 24.69387673 mean±s.e. 340±20 2280±90 mean±s.e. 571±8 1490±20 Table 63 Table 64

[u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [1] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bu 338.5907 790.5877737 zi 437.1236319 1579.378448 bu 339.2099736 781. 6663172 ci 447.2760468 1457.791082 fu 280.5609242 779.6430319 ci 433.4479168 1522.797585 ru 383.756424 1061.867027 si 412.2003979 1650.843339 fu 367.9310479 686.9387918 Mean 432.5119983 1552.702613 Mean 342.0098139 820.1405883 s.e. 6.596369424 36.73845546 s.e. 17.62127311 63.31195792 mean±s.e. 433±7 1550±40 mean±s.e. 340±20 820±60 Table 66 Table 65

47 [ll F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) shi 475.9106282 1632.933383 shi 374.8542418 1776.408902 shi 469.1213722 1629.771762 zhi 423.6435625 1591.264605 shi 456.5210358 1739.23099 Mean 440.0101681 1673.921928 s.e. 18.60386318 35.51787188 mean±s.e. 440±20 1670±40 Table 67

American Female 1:

[a] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) kang 1025.430436 1486.567644 bu 325.5656337 728.4500316 zhang 946.3450358 1505.472482 bu 281.2172906 719.3287197 da 887.3276541 1489.680527 fu 332.3545261 714.5912849 da 869.0881977 1463.568115 bu 416.6382746 910.9326077 yang 921.8362347 1563.976363 fu 293.8398363 687.2829594 Mean 930.0055117 1501.853026 Mean 329.9231123 752.1171207 s.e. 27.36051174 16.91147028 s.e. 23.68404383 40.29219906 mean±s.e. 930±30 1500±20 mean±s.e. 330±20 750±40 Table 68 Table 69

[i] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bing 404.2253872 2395.765319 yu 386.9118893 2055.341917 yi 322.7722724 2691.343752 yun 329.2636338 2460.860146 jing 334.0181083 2427.792612 yu 351. 5095494 2392.860809 jin 340.857616 2553.014858 qu 334.5759185 2236.008602 jin 358.831254 2465.823658 yu 344.9975851 2503.330882 Mean 352.1409276 2506.74804 Mean 349.4517152 2329.680471 s.e. 14.27553677 53.12349969 s.e. 10.13949347 82.27708926 mean±s.e. 350±10 2510±50 mean±s.e. 350±10 2330±80 Table 70 Table 71

48 Iv] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) III F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) ge 705.7797458 1535.660257 shi 496.2931126 1869.905927 de 693.8272475 1586.918819 shi 484.1037853 1846.31961 de 662.9504146 1515.018862 shi 499.6382609 1877.601974 de 723.7184964 1657.724609 zhi 482.6064776 1712.237678 de 686.6114635 1432.128937 shi 478.1570426 1815.87186 Mean 694.5774736 1545.490297 Mean 488.1597358 1824.38741 s.e. 10.09698254 37.54250863 s.e. 4.154826335 30.02900576 mean±s.e. 690±10 1550±40 mean±s.e. 488±4 1820±30 Table 72 Table 73

[1] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) zi 528.709903 1205.024842 ci 542.7292329 1130.311542 ci 598.8966045 1330.039148 si 359.5380808 1078.704226 Mean 507.4684553 1186.01994 s.e. 46.14254992 48.80082428 mean±s.e. 51O±50 1190±50 Table 74

American Female 2:

la] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) Ii] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) kang 967.0822172 1500.955156 bing 458.4316838 2419.043831 zhang 819.8284709 1490.896246 yi 417.1353395 2280.47583 da 799.873407 1452.636726 jing 414.9163625 2308.924879 da 854.9185753 1551.88477 jin 394.6649304 2220.375228 yang 832.9086129 1534.148354 jin 490.9604863 2244.173523 Mean 854.9222566 1506.104251 Mean 435.2217605 2294.598658 s.e. 29.43332034 17.3189209 s.e. 17.36345352 34.59993337 mean±s.e. 850±30 1510±20 mean±s.e. 440±20 2300±30 Table 75 Table 76

49 [u] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bu 390.8064184 1192.335671 [1] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) bu 473.5451057 1204.040469 zi 498.0799162 1556.660744 fu 456.7265347 1139.015979 ci 591. 5630886 1607.645578 ru 398.7847699 1223.318691 ci 522.1729065 1597.158804 fu 435.6797312 1229.738649 si 432.7299826 1569.632873 Mean 431.108512 1197.689892 Mean 511.1364 735 1582.7745 s.e. 16.04232942 16.11766682 s.e. 29.33518339 10.58334964 mean+s.e. 430+20 1200+20 mean+s.e. 510+30 1580+10 Table 77 Table 78

[v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) [ll F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) yu 370.6453476 2765.98759 shi 498.4563002 1954.023982 yun 363.2947094 2627.130765 shi 452.6558808 1838.61307 yu 347.9292233 2643.849655 shi 507.0594504 1938.403698 qu 364.4398658 2501.67987 zhi 447.0922667 1793.537113 yu 363.187122 2724.003397 shi 500.5737411 1805.260183 Mean 361.8992536 2652.530255 Mean 481.1675278 1865.967609 s.e. 3.753108825 45.52872856 s.e. 12.88396651 33.67547402 mean±s.e. 362+4 2650+50 mean+s.e. 480+10 1870+30 Table 79 Table 80

[v] F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) ge 765.2866227 1648.010666 de 498.6653582 1957.988733 de 416.3380446 2038.334662 che 571.9323029 1563.313366 de 502.513328 1782.668911 Mean 550.9471313 1798.063268 s.e. 58.9833105 89.76825245 mean+s.e. 550+60 1800+90 Table 81

50 References

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