Acquisition of pitch in Chinese by Danish learners

Marjoleine Sloos; Jie Liang; Mengzhu Yan; Chun Zhang

Acquisition of pitch in Chinese by Danish learners

Marjoleine Sloos, Jie Liang, Mengzhu Yan, Chun Zhang

Fryske Akademy (FA)

Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › Scientific › peer-review

Abstract

Native speakers recognize a second language accent mainly by prosodic features. Pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability are language-specific and have to be acquired in L2 acquisition (usually without explicit teaching). Until now, results remain inconclusive as to whether L2 speakers are able to acquire a pitch range that is wider than their native pitch range. The present paper investigates the acquisition of mean pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability in Mandarin Chinese by native speakers of Danish. This is particularly interesting since Chinese uses a relatively wide pitch range whereas Danish has an extremely small pitch range. We show that Danish students can largely acquire the mean pitch and pitch range of Mandarin Chinese. However, the pitch variability of Danish-accented Chinese turned out to be considerably lower than native Chinese, which we tentatively attribute to a poor acquisition of tone.

Original language	English
Pages	34-43
Publication status	Published - 2016

Keywords

Chinese
Danish
tone acquisition
pitch range
pitch variability

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http://chineseaccents.yolasite.com/proceedings.phpLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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title = "Acquisition of pitch in Chinese by Danish learners",

abstract = "Native speakers recognize a second language accent mainly by prosodic features. Pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability are language-specific and have to be acquired in L2 acquisition (usually without explicit teaching). Until now, results remain inconclusive as to whether L2 speakers are able to acquire a pitch range that is wider than their native pitch range. The present paper investigates the acquisition of mean pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability in Mandarin Chinese by native speakers of Danish. This is particularly interesting since Chinese uses a relatively wide pitch range whereas Danish has an extremely small pitch range. We show that Danish students can largely acquire the mean pitch and pitch range of Mandarin Chinese. However, the pitch variability of Danish-accented Chinese turned out to be considerably lower than native Chinese, which we tentatively attribute to a poor acquisition of tone.",

keywords = "Chinese, Danish, tone acquisition, pitch range, pitch variability",

author = "Marjoleine Sloos and Jie Liang and Mengzhu Yan and Chun Zhang",

note = "Proceedings of the 2nd CAAC2015",

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TY - CONF

T1 - Acquisition of pitch in Chinese by Danish learners

AU - Sloos, Marjoleine

AU - Liang, Jie

AU - Yan, Mengzhu

AU - Zhang, Chun

N1 - Proceedings of the 2nd CAAC2015

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - Native speakers recognize a second language accent mainly by prosodic features. Pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability are language-specific and have to be acquired in L2 acquisition (usually without explicit teaching). Until now, results remain inconclusive as to whether L2 speakers are able to acquire a pitch range that is wider than their native pitch range. The present paper investigates the acquisition of mean pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability in Mandarin Chinese by native speakers of Danish. This is particularly interesting since Chinese uses a relatively wide pitch range whereas Danish has an extremely small pitch range. We show that Danish students can largely acquire the mean pitch and pitch range of Mandarin Chinese. However, the pitch variability of Danish-accented Chinese turned out to be considerably lower than native Chinese, which we tentatively attribute to a poor acquisition of tone.

AB - Native speakers recognize a second language accent mainly by prosodic features. Pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability are language-specific and have to be acquired in L2 acquisition (usually without explicit teaching). Until now, results remain inconclusive as to whether L2 speakers are able to acquire a pitch range that is wider than their native pitch range. The present paper investigates the acquisition of mean pitch, pitch range, and pitch variability in Mandarin Chinese by native speakers of Danish. This is particularly interesting since Chinese uses a relatively wide pitch range whereas Danish has an extremely small pitch range. We show that Danish students can largely acquire the mean pitch and pitch range of Mandarin Chinese. However, the pitch variability of Danish-accented Chinese turned out to be considerably lower than native Chinese, which we tentatively attribute to a poor acquisition of tone.

KW - Chinese

KW - Danish

KW - tone acquisition

KW - pitch range

KW - pitch variability

M3 - Paper

SP - 34

EP - 43

ER -

Acquisition of pitch in Chinese by Danish learners

Abstract

Keywords

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Cite this