The influence of speech variation on L2 tone learning

PENG Gang

Native speakers of a tone language (Mandarin) were trained to learning a more complex tone system (Cantonese), with one group receiving training tone tokens with larger variation and the other group with smaller variation. Performance before and after training was measured using closed response-set identification and pairwise discrimination tasks. Results show that the degree of speech variation doesn’t affect the performance both identification and discrimination. Significant improvement was found in tone identification following training, but not in tone discrimination. Furthermore, segmental carriers show significant influence on the tone performance. In particular, if the base syllables (segmental carries without considering the tones) exist in Mandarin phonological system, the performance boost in tone identification is significantly better than the tone performance for those base syllables which do not exist in Mandarin phonological system. Results indicate that both listeners’ native language experience and strategies in performing the tasks affect the perception and acquisition of non-native lexical tones.