30.1287, Review: Chinese, Mandarin; Sino-Tibetan; Language Acquisition; Phonetics; Phonology: Zhang (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1287. Wed Mar 20 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1287, Review: Chinese, Mandarin; Sino-Tibetan; Language Acquisition; Phonetics; Phonology: Zhang (2018)

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Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2019 22:30:23
From: Mengzhu Yan [mengzhu.yan at vuw.ac.nz]
Subject: Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36464337


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-3248.html

AUTHOR: Hang  Zhang
TITLE: Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones
SUBTITLE: Beyond First-Language Transfer
SERIES TITLE: Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication
PUBLISHER: Brill
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Mengzhu Yan

SUMMARY

“Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin Chinese Tones — Beyond First -
Language Transfer” by Hang Zhang, as the title suggests, looks at how second
language (L2) learners, specifically non-tonal language speakers, i.e.
English, Japanese and Korean, learn Mandarin Chinese tones. This books offers
novel contributions to the research of L2 acquisition with the aim to figure
out the factors of learners’ errors that are beyond learners’ first language
(L1). 

The book is structured in 7 chapters, which can be further divided into four
main parts as follows:

The first part (Chapter 1 and 2) offers an introduction to the phonetics and
phonology of Mandarin Chinese tones, prosodic structures of the three
languages that are the native languages of L2 groups researched in this book,
and a comprehensive overview of the previous research devoted to the L1 and L2
acquisition of Chinese tones. Chapter 1 also highlights the importance and
difficulty of learning Chinese tones. Chapter 2 particularly focuses on the
three puzzles that the previous research has not resolved with the explanation
of L1 transfer, i.e.: “(1) positional effects of contour tones, (2) the order
of acquisition of Mandarin tones, and (3) the paradox of T3” (p. 26).

The second part (Chapter 3) presents the methodology that was used to address
the three puzzles discussed in the previous chapter. This part provides the
information on test materials, participants, recording procedure, guidelines
on assessing L2 tones and a very brief summary of the statistical analyses of
the data used in the next part. The chapter emphasises a detailed and logical
description of how native Chinese speakers judge the correctness of a token
produced by participants. In addition to correctness judgements, pitch values
were also measured and evaluated as one of the assessment criteria. 

The third part, also the core chapters (Chapter 4-6) of the book, describes
the research questions, hypotheses, research findings and discussions of the
experiments corresponding to the three puzzles raised in the first part. Each
of the three chapters focuses on one aspect, so the three chapters are
independent, but are also highly related to each other. Chapter 4 investigates
the role of anticipatory coarticulation in the production of T2 and T4 in
disyllabic Chinese words by first introducing the nature of anticipatory tone
coarticulation and then calculating the accuracy rates, maximum F0 and error
types of these tones as produced by the three groups of learners. The results
show that beyond L1 transfer, anticipatory dissimilation results in particular
error patterns by L2 adult learners. Chapter 5 followed the same organization
as in Chapter 4, and concerns the difficulty of the acquisition of different
tone pairs by conducting a constraint-based analysis using two independent
phonological principles, the Tonal Markedness Scale (TMS) and the Obligatory
Contour Principle (OCP). 

This chapter suggests a four-stage path of OCP sub-constraint re-ranking to
explain the patterns of tone error in L2’s production (p. 80). The focus of
Chapter 6 is on non-native T3 production, one of the well-known difficult
areas for L2 learners due to its similarity to T2, high variability and the
tone sandhi rule. The chapter examines the acquisition of the three allophones
of T3 and discusses the possible error source which points towards teaching
pedagogy. 

The last part (Chapter 7) provides the pedagogical implications of the
research, an overview and evaluation of the current teaching materials, as
well as some sample exercises for practicing the tones, aiming to improve
teaching and learning the Chinese tones. This chapter points out the areas in
teaching tones that are easily flawed and worth reconsidering (e.g.
inconsistent descriptions of tones in teaching materials) and areas that
should be paid more attention to (e.g. training of T3’s variants, exercises to
practice the Chinese tones). Further, it also offers a number of suggestions
and practical solutions for teachers and teaching materials makers to better
understand the challenges that the learners are facing and to facilitate
successful learning. 

EVALUATION

It is well-known that acquiring Chinese tones is one of the most challenging
areas in learning Chinese as a second language by adult learners. The
acquisition of Chinese tones has therefore always been a great interest in the
field of second language acquisition. Compared to the acquisition of segments,
it received more attention (Casas-Tost & Rovira-Esteva 2015). However, most
research tried to explain this learning difficulty by comparing the
differences between learners’ native language and Chinese. As the author
correctly points out, there remain puzzles that L1 transfer only cannot fully
explain. This study investigates the factors beyond L1 transfer and is
therefore a worthwhile publication and a timely one, providing an exceptional
contribution to the study of the acquisition of Chinese tones from novel
perspectives. In addition to the contribution to this research area, another
remarkable point of this book is its pedagogical values, as it offers
practical solutions and sample teaching materials that may help solve the
problems addressed in this book that the current teaching materials lack.
Therefore, this book is of great use to not only researchers, but also
teachers and students of Chinese as a second language, especially those who
are facing problems in teaching or the acquisition of Chinese tones. 

To solve the puzzles, Zhang has selected three L2 languages groups, English,
Japanese and Korean. The selection of the languages is wise and
representative, as L1 prosody, manifested in pitch, is one of the major
reasons of L1 transfer, and role of pitch in all the selected three languages
is different (Chapter 2): American English is a stress language; Tokyo
Japanese represents a pitch-accent language; and Seoul Korean is neither. By
this selection of L1s, Zhang tells apart the acquisition difficulties that can
be explained by learners’ native languages and those that cannot explained by
the respective L1s. Also, I believe there is a large community of Chinese
learners with these three language backgrounds, so also in this way, the
selection has a wide coverage. 

Moreover, the valuable experimental methods, materials and conclusions
contribute to the understanding of acquisition of particular Chinese tones or
tone pairs—not only for the L1 English, Japanese and Korean speakers—and they
can definitely be used to investigate similar issues with learners who have
other language backgrounds and hence benefit a wider community. This book
therefore provides researchers, especially young researchers, significant
support in the design of the tasks and creation of the experimental materials.
However, the evidence that the book discovered might have been more convincing
if another L2 group, namely, with a tonal language, were included, as having a
tonal might have a positive or negative L1 transfer on the acquisition of
Chinese tones (see e.g. Gandour 1983, Hao 2012, Lee et al. 1996). This would
have provided a full picture of how phonetic and phonological constraints,
rather than the previous experiences with tone languages, explain the puzzles.
This is certainly warranted for future research directions to explore. 

Another strength is its well-organised structure through the whole book. The
book is well-written and the language is easy-to-understand. Each chapter
presents a very clear aim using a short introduction at the beginning of each
chapter, guiding readers to explore the upcoming sections and keep them highly
interested. Zhang summarized previous research findings, experiment procedures
and linguistic jargons in a very reader-friendly and accessible way. The
research questions are rooted in literature gaps and logically presented using
concise language, showing this research is timely in addressing unsolved
puzzles in order to facilitate the L2 acquisition of Chinese tones. However,
the part that concerns the relationship between the musical ability and the
acquisition of tones in section 1.4.1 (p. 15) is somewhat off topic in my
opinion, though it is an interesting point. The section would be of more value
if the knowledge of the musical experience was tested in this book. In order
to test this, we would need participants with and without musical experience
for comparison, which would be an interesting avenue for future research (see
e.g. Weidema et al. 2016 on the perception of pitch contours in speech and
music).

The book covers both production and perception with a clear focus on
production. The tasks were well-designed, and the data were properly handled
and analysed using appropriate statistical models. Though error rates was one
of very important parameters in judging the listener’s ability to identify a
sound, it is limited and sometimes could be supported or complemented by
different measurements. For instance, in the study ‘Perception of T3 Variants’
(p. 93), reaction times might indicate the ease or difficulty that listeners
had to identify a sound, viz. faster reaction times showing easier
identifications (see e.g. Mehler et al. 1981), but this was not included.
Further, this book also leaves room for future work to employ other
experimental paradigms. 

Summarizing, Zhang’s (2018) book, ‘Second Language Acquisition of Mandarin
Chinese Tones —Beyond First-Language Transfer’ covers a very good range of hot
topics in the acquisition of Chinese tones with detailed linguistic
description, well-designed experiments, critical evaluation of the current
teaching materials and teaching materials samples. This book is beyond doubt
an excellent source that will surely benefit not only a community of linguists
or psycholinguists who are interested in L2 acquisition but also classroom
teachers and language learners with not much linguistic background. I hope
this book will raise awareness of the existing problems in the current text
materials and classroom teaching, and will prompt more work and advances on
the development of teaching and learning Chinese tones.

REFERENCES

Gandour, Jack, Donald Wong, Li Hsieh, Bret Weinzapfel, Diana Van Lancker, and
Gary D. Hutchins. 2000. A crosslinguistic PET study of tone perception.
Journal of cognitive neuroscience 12(1), 207-222.

Hao, Yen-Chen. 2012. Second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by
tonal and non-tonal language speakers. Journal of phonetics, 40(2), 269-279.

Lee, Yuh-Shiow, Douglas A. Vakoch, and Lee H. Wurm. 1996. Tone perception in
Cantonese and Mandarin: A cross-linguistic comparison. Journal of
Psycholinguistic Research 25(5), 527-542.

Mehler, Jacques, Jean Yves Dommergues, Ulrich Hans Frauenfelder, and Juan
Segui. 1981. The syllable's role in speech segmentation. Journal of verbal
learning and verbal behavior 20 (3), 298-305.

Rovira-Esteva, Sara & Casas-Tost, Helena. 2015. Mapping Chinese language
pedagogy from 1966 to 2013. A bibliometric study of the Journal of Chinese
Language Teachers Association. Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers
Association 50. 31-58. 

Weidema, Joey L., M. P. Roncaglia-Denissen, and Henkjan Honing. 2016. Top–down
modulation on the perception and categorization of identical pitch contours in
speech and music. Frontiers in psychology 7, 817.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mengzhu Yan is a Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics at Victoria University of
Wellington, New Zealand. She has obtained her MA in Linguistics from Aarhus
University, Denmark. Her research areas are Phonetics and Phonology, Second
Language Acquisition, Syntax, Semantics, Psycholinguistics and Information
Structure.





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