Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Perception, Processing and Learning of Mandarin Tone by Second Language Speakers

汉语普通话是当今最广泛学习的外语之一，也是美国政府认为对国家安全至关重要的语言。它也被美国外交服务学院（Foreign Service Institute）列为“第四类：对以英语为母语的人来说特别困难的语言”。国家，2016年）。造成这种困难的主要原因是普通话是一种音调语言，其中仅音调轮廓的差异就完全改变了单词的含义（例如，[ma]-平调=母亲; [ma]-升调=麻; [ma]-低沉调=马; [ma]-降调=骂）。因此，一个成功的普通话学习者需要能够区分不同的音调，将音调信息与词义联系起来，并在听和说的同时实时处理所有这些信息。本研究旨在探讨第二语言学习者在不同水平上对声调的处理和使用，包括声调感知、实时词汇处理和词汇学习。为了更广泛地了解以英语为母语的人在第二语言习得普通话声调时所面临的挑战。为此，该项目借鉴了言语感知和心理语言学研究的理论模型和方法范式，这些研究调查了母语人士对音调的感知和处理，并将这些范式扩展到调查第二语言学习者对音调的习得和使用。该项目包括三个实验。实验一采用范畴感知研究中成熟的识别和辨别任务，探讨二语学习者对声调的范畴感知程度，以及二语经验在这一过程中的作用。实验二采用眼动技术考察了二语学习者在汉语口语实时理解中声调的使用情况。最后，实验三研究了没有声调语言经验的英语使用者在不同的训练条件下学习带声调的新单词的情况。通过在受控实验室环境中探索第二语言学习中普遍存在的声调困难，本项目将促进我们对第二语言学习者如何感知、处理和学习普通话声调的理解，并提供第一手证据，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得的。通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来提供支持。

Mandarin Chinese is one of the most widely learned foreign languages today, and a language deemed critical to national security by the U.S. government. It is also listed in "Category IV: Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers" by the Foreign Service Institute (U.S. Dept. of State, 2016). A major contributor to this difficulty is the fact that Mandarin is a tonal language, in which differences in pitch contours alone completely change the meaning of a word (e.g., [ma]-flat tone = mother; [ma]-rising tone = hemp; [ma]-low dipping tone = horse; [ma]-falling tone = scold). A successful learner of Mandarin thus needs to be able to distinguish between different tones, connect tonal information with word meaning, and process all this information in real-time while listening and speaking. Little is known so far about which aspects of this complex learning task are particularly challenging for English-speaking learners of Mandarin, and what instructional practices may aid them in mastering this challenge.The goal of this project is to investigate second language (L2) learners' processing and use of tones at multiple levels, including tone perception, real-time lexical processing, and word learning, in order to gain a broader understanding of the challenges in the L2 acquisition of Mandarin tones by native speakers of English. To this end, the project draws on theoretical models and methodological paradigms from research in Speech Perception and Psycholinguistics that has investigated the perception and processing of tones by native speakers, and extends these paradigms to investigate the acquisition and use of tones by L2 learners. The project consists of 3 experiments. Experiment 1 employs identification and discrimination tasks well established in categorical perception research to explore the extent to which L2 learners perceive tone categorically, and the role of L2 experience in this process. Experiment 2 investigates L2 learners' use of tone in the real-time comprehension of spoken Mandarin in a visual-world eye tracking study. Finally, Experiment 3 studies how English speakers with no tonal language experience learn novel words with tones under different training conditions. By exploring the widely recognized difficulty with tones in L2 learning in a controlled laboratory environment, this project will advance our understanding of how L2 learners perceive, process and learn tones in Mandarin, and provide first-hand evidence to inform evidence-based L2 instruction and curricular materials in a language critical to U.S. national security.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.