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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: PHONOLOGICAL ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING UNIT TRANSFER: THE IMPACT OF FIRST LANGUAGE SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PREFERRED SUBSYLLABIC DIVISION UNITS Shih-wei Chen, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor Mariam Jean Dreher Department of Curriculum and Instruction This study investigated the potential transfer of first language (L1) phonological processing unit to second language processing. English and Chinese phonology differ mainly in the complexity of their syllable structures. English phonology allows highly complex syllable structures, whereas Chinese has been characterized primarily as a core syllable language, i.e., its syllables typically consist only of a consonant and vowel (CV). This sharp contrast is hypothesized to entail different phonological processing units in the two languages, and to result in, through L1 transfer, the poor phonological awareness often observed in Chinese speakers learning English as a second language (ESL). This hypothesis was tested by examining the performance patterns of Chinese ESL fourth graders on phoneme deletion and phoneme isolation tasks. The results suggest that Chinese ESL children do seem to process an English syllable in terms of an intact core syllable plus its appendices due to L1 transfer. This gives support to a developmental account of subsyllabic division unit preference, which suggests that core syllable is universally preferred in the initial stages of language development, only after which speakers of different languages diverge in their division unit preferences due to linguistic characteristics of their respective L1s. The presence of transfer suggested that Chinese ESL children performed differently on two item types—core-syllable items (requiring segmentation of an element within the core syllable) and non-core-syllable items (requiring segmentation of any appendices from the core syllable). As phonological awareness involves the ability to segment cohesive sound units, it was hypothesized that only performance on core- syllable items should represent phonological awareness. This hypothesis was tested by analyzing the item types’ respective contribution to decoding skills. Phonological awareness has long been established as a strong predictor of decoding skills; thus the analyses served to test the two item types’ respective criterion validity in tapping phonological awareness. The results confirmed the hypothesis. This implies that, methodologically, phonological awareness of Chinese ESL children could be more reliably measured if, in future studies, only core-syllable segmentation items are employed. Educationally, instruction in phonological awareness might emphasize core- syllable segmentation, which alone appears to reflect Chinese ESL children’s phonological awareness. PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING UNIT TRANSFER: THE IMPACT OF FIRST LANGUAGE SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR PREFERRED SUBSYLLABIC DIVISION UNITS By Shih-wei Chen Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 Advisory Committee Professor Mariam Jean Dreher, Chair Professor C. Mitchell Dayton, Dean’s Representative Professor Linda Baker Professor Ellen Broselow Professor Marilyn J. Chambliss © Copyright by Shih-wei Chen 2006 Dedicated to My Beloved Mom and Dad in Western Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss; My Dearest Bodhisattva-like Wife and Best Friend, Kwee-len; and My Doggie Sons: Rambo in Pure Land and Gueiyifo in Kaohsiung ii Acknowledgements My wife said I was blessed to have a trustworthy advisor like Professor Mariam Jean Dreher. I couldn’t agree more. I have said too many thanks to her, so I decided not to this time. Instead, I intend to express my gratitude to her by passing forward all the generosity and help she has never failed to offer me to my future students, so that they can be multiplied and amplified, all because of one origin. I want to thank Professor Ellen Broselow, who, along with Professor Christina Y. Bethin, helped me lay a solid foundation in phonology and phonetics when I was studying linguistics at SUNY, Stony Brook. I am grateful to Professor Mitchell Dayton for his always quick responses to my statistics questions. My sincere thanks also go to Professor Linda Baker for her kindly encouragement and insightful comments. I am appreciative of Professor Marilyn J. Chambliss for her practical suggestions, which may prove critical to whether I could make real interdisciplinary contribution in the future. I do not think I can express in words my appreciation for the most important person in my life—my dearest wife and best friend, Kwee-len. Her wisdom is the power that has always lifted me up above troubled waters and carried me forward. Literally, I could not have obtained my Ph.D. without her. If wisdom were the criterion, she deserves this degree more than I do. I want to dedicate this dissertation to my late father and mother, who had been so loving to and supportive of me. How I wish they could have lived to see me receiving the degree, though I believe they are now in pure land tenderly watching me with pride. iii I wish to thank also Professor Gregory Hancock, my minor advisor in Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation. He showed me the beauty of statistics and how a teacher could make a difficult subject so easily understood. My gratitude also goes to Professor Rebecca Oxford, who allowed me the freedom to follow my own academic interests. It was her kindness that had made me an interdisciplinary student. I am indebted to the teachers and students in Kaohsiung Municipal Shin Juang Elementary School, whose assistance in providing the subjects and the library for testing was vital to this dissertation. My special thanks go to Ms. Chiou-ping Zheng, Dean of the Academic Affairs, who asked nothing for return in helping me arranging for the testing. To me, all these gentle beings are Bodhisattva. iv Table of Contents Dedication........................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents............................................................................................................. v Chapter I: Theoretical Rationale...................................................................................... 1 Introduction.................................................................................................................. 1 English and Chinese: a Brief Comparison................................................................... 4 Research Questions...................................................................................................... 9 Chapter II: Literature Review.......................................................................................... 21 Introduction.................................................................................................................. 21 Studies on Phonological Transfer and Phonological Processing Units....................... 21 L1 Phonological Transfer Studies............................................................................ 21 Core Syllable as a Linguistic Universal................................................................... 27 Syllable as a Phonological Processing Unit in Chinese........................................... 29 Sub-syllabic Unit Studies............................................................................................. 32 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 32 Onset-rime Studies................................................................................................... 34 Body-coda Studies.................................................................................................... 39 Methodological Issues.................................................................................................. 45 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 45 Sonority.................................................................................................................... 47 Global Similarities.................................................................................................... 50 Vowel Length........................................................................................................... 51 Overview of the Present Study..................................................................................... 53 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 53 The Study................................................................................................................. 53 Use and Creation of Measures............................................................................. 53 Predictions............................................................................................................ 58 L1 Processing Unit Transfer................................................................................ 59 Nature of the Segmentation Performance Based on Core-syllable Awareness.... 67 Chapter III: Methodology...............................................................................................
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