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

普通话是当今学习最广泛的外语之一，也是美国政府认为对国家安全至关重要的语言。它也被美国外交研究所（U.S. department of State, 2016）列为“第四类：对以英语为母语的人来说异常困难的语言”。造成这种困难的一个主要原因是普通话是一种声调语言，仅音高轮廓的差异就完全改变了一个词的意思（例如，[ma]-平音=母亲；[ma]-升音=麻；[ma]-低垂音=马；[ma]-降音=骂）。因此，一个成功的汉语学习者需要能够区分不同的声调，将声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。到目前为止，对于学习汉语的英语学习者来说，这项复杂的学习任务的哪些方面尤其具有挑战性，以及哪些教学实践可以帮助他们应对这一挑战，我们知之甚少。本项目的目标是研究第二语言学习者在多个层面上对声调的处理和使用，包括声调感知、实时词汇处理和单词学习，以便更广泛地了解母语为英语的人在第二语言习得普通话声调时面临的挑战。为此，该项目借鉴了语言感知和心理语言学研究中的理论模型和方法范式，这些研究已经研究了母语人士对声调的感知和处理，并将这些范式扩展到二语学习者对声调的习得和使用。该项目包括3个实验。实验1采用分类感知研究中建立的识别和辨别任务，探讨二语学习者对语气的分类感知程度，以及二语经验在这一过程中的作用。实验二通过视觉世界眼动追踪研究了二语学习者在普通话口语实时理解过程中声调的使用。最后，实验3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如何学习带有声调的新词。通过在受控的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，并为基于证据的第二语言教学和对美国国家安全至关重要的课程材料提供第一手证据。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。

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.