Perception of synthesized flectional tones in Mandarin Chinese by native Chinese speakers and Korean L2 learners

Abstract

Among the four lexical tones in Chinese, Tone 3 (T3), canonically transcribed as carrying pitch value 214, has received the most controversy. This study investigated how T3 was perceived by native speakers and L2 learners. In the current experiment, the participants included 20 native Chinese speakers and 20 Korean L2 learners of Chinese (at the advanced level). The stimuli were 13 flectional tones with different ending pitch values synthesized by Praat, which were categorized as 211, 212, 213, 214, and 215. The overall results showed that the tone with pitch value 211 was the most likely to be perceived as T3, while the other tones were mostly perceived as T2 (mid-rising tone). The native Chinese speakers and the Korean learners who have learned Chinese for over 5 years also tended to perceive 211 as T3, which indicated that they were more sensitive to pitch changes and contour cues. The higher the ending pitch value of the tone, the more likely the Korean learners judged the tone as T2, implying that Korean learners replied more on the ending pitch value than Chinese speakers. The findings suggest the effects of perceptual mechanisms and instructional methods in L2 acquisition of Chinese tones.