The Perception of Tone and Focus in Mandarin by Indonesian Learners: A Case Study

  • Hana Nurul Hasanah University of Indonesia
Abstract views: 278 , pdf downloads: 217
Keywords: principles of politeness, learning, teachers, students, fem

Abstract

 

In a tone language, the interface between tone, intonation, and focus will affect the pitch height and contour of tones. Previous perceptual studies revealed the potential conflicts in perceiving pitch variations at lexical and post-lexical levels that were experienced by either native listeners or listeners who speak Mandarin language as a second or foreign language. Rarely we find research in Indonesia that provides evidence for Mandarin language learners’ perceptual ability at a post-lexical level. This paper investigated how well learners with distinct first language (L1) background identify tones that are affected by the realization of focus and the presence and location of focus in distinct intonation types. Perceptual experiments were conducted towards two groups of listeners: Mandarin learners with Indonesian L1 and learners with a tone language L1 background (Hakka or Hokkien). Their identification accuracy (IA) rate in recognizing the tone type for the last syllable with a narrow focus was compared with their IA in identifying the location of the focus. In general, identifying tone type was easier than identifying focus position for both groups. However, the Mean from each group showed that learners with a tone language L1 were slightly better than the other group. Results exhibited more similarities between the two groups of the listener, which indicates that L1 background only has a mild effect on the perceptual ability of Indonesian learners of Mandarin as a foreign language.

 

 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Chao, Y.R. (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Chen, A. &Kager, R. (2011). The perception of lexical tones and tone sandhi in L2: Success or failure. Proceedings of the17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, August 17-21, Hong Kong.

Chen, Y. & Gussenhoven, C. (2008). Emphasis and tonal implementation in Standard Chinese. Journal of Phonetics. Vol. 36 Issue 4, pp. 724-746. DOI: 10.1016/j.wocn.2008.06.003.

Ding, H.,Jokisch, O., &Hoffmann, R.(2010). Perception and production of Mandarin tones by German speakers.Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2010, Fifth International Conference, May 10-14, Chicago, Illinois.

Gao,Man. (2016). Perception of lexical tones by Swedish learners of Mandarin. Proceedings of the joint workshop on NLP for Computer Assisted Language Learning and NLP for Language Acquisition, November 16, SLTC, Umeå, Sweden.

Guo, L.& LiangTao, L. (2008).Tone production in Mandarin Chinese by American students: A case study. Proceedings of the 20th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics April 25-27, Colombus, OH.

Hasanah, H.N. (2011). Analisis kesalahan tonal pembelajar Bahasa Mandarin: Studi kasus di sebuah universitas negeri di Jakarta. Unpublished Master’s Thesis.Depok: Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia.

Lehiste, I. (1970). Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Liang, J.&Van Heuven, V.J. (2007).Chinese tone and intonation perceived by L1 and L2 listeners.In C. Gussenhoven and T. Riad (Eds.).Tones and tunes Volume 2: Experimental studies in word and sentence prosody.Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Lin, M.&Li Z. (2011).Focus and boundary in Chinese intonation.Proceedings of the17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, August 17-21, Hong Kong.

Liu, F.&Xu, Y.(2005). Parallel encoding in focus and interrogative meaning in Mandarin intonation. Phonetica, 62, 70-87. https://doi.org/10.1159/000090090.

Liu, M., Chen, Y. & Schiller, N.O.(2016). Context effects on tone and intonation processing in Mandarin. Proceedings of Speech Prosody, Eighth International Conference, 31 May - 3 Jun, Boston, USA.

Norman, J. (1988). Chinese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van Heuven, V.J.(1994). Introducing prosodic phonetics. In C. Odé& V.J. van Heuven (Eds.).Experimental studies of Indonesian prosody [Semaian 9] (pp. 1-26).Leiden: VakgroepTalen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, Leiden University.

Van Zanten, E. &Goedemans, R. (2009). Prominence in Indonesian: Stress, phrases, and boundaries. Wacana, JurnalIlmuPengetahuanBudaya Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 197-225.

Xu, B.R.&Mok, P.P. (2012). Cross-liguistic perception of intonation by Mandarin and Cantonese listeners. Proceedings of Speech Prosody, Sixth International Conference, May 22-25, Shanghai, China.

Yang, C. (2016). Tone errors in scripted conversations of L2 Mandarin Chinese. Chinese as a Second Language Research Vol. 5 No. 1, pp.63-86. DOI: 10.1515/caslar-2016-0003

Yuan, J. (2011). Perception of intonation in Mandarin Chinese.J. Acoust. Soc. Am.Vol. 130 No. 6, pp.4063–4069. DOI: 10.1121/1.3651818.

Yuan, J.,&Shih, C. (2004). Confusability of Chinese intonation.Proceedings of Speech Prosody, Fourth International Conference, March 23-26, Nara, Japan.

Published
2019-02-01
How to Cite
Hasanah, H. N. (2019). The Perception of Tone and Focus in Mandarin by Indonesian Learners: A Case Study. IJOTL-TL: Indonesian Journal of Language Teaching and Linguistics, 4(1), 11-26. https://doi.org/10.30957/ijoltl.v4i1.553