All right.
Hello everyone.
My name is Kaley Hegedus.
I'll be your final
presenter this evening.
And I'll be talking
about the second language
acquisition of consonant
allophones in Mandarin.
OK.
So my research question that
I had for this project was,
how well are
students with English
as their first language
able to pick up and produce
Mandarin allophones
while studying Mandarin
as their second language
without formal instruction?
And allophones being slight
changes to consonants
that we make whenever
we're speaking
for ease of articulation
instead of changing the meaning.
The reason why I'm specifying
constant allophones
is because Mandarin is
classified as a tonal language.
So they have four tones
with a fifth neutral tone.
With those come these
allophones-- or changes.
A lot of research has already
been done on tonal allophones.
But not much research has been
done on consonant allophones.
So that was where my curiosity
was for this project.
Good heavens.
Here we go.
So the specific
allophonic changes
that I'm looking
at for this project
were voiceless consonants
changing to voice consonants.
So whether or not
your vocal folds
are vibrating when
you're talking.
So the difference
between te and de.
And this happens in Chinese,
as prescribed online,
with the second syllable of a
disyllabic word in mutual tone.
That word would become voiced.
Then next we were looking
at an assimilation.
So N changing its
place of articulation
to a different nasal
based on the consonant
that was following it.
And then, codas becoming onsets
where the rule prescribed was
the first syllable's coda of
a disyllabic word becoming
an onset to the second syllable.
I realize that this is
not an allophonic change
in and of itself, but it
relates to N assimilation
as we'll see later on.
That's all right.
OK.
So where the data came from.
I interviewed all
of the professors
within the department
except for one
that was overseeing
my research to confirm
that the allophonic rules
prescribed were indeed
ones that they
possessed, as well
as 10 students within
the program where
their first language
was English to see
if they have the same
allophones as the professors.
And for doing this, I
used the system Praat
where I recorded the professors
and students reading out
the Chinese words and then
analyzed the spectrograms
as you see down below.
So my first result
was for the voicing.
And as we can see
here from the data,
we have the neutral
toned syllables
in the second syllable of
the disyllabic word changing
from voiceless to voiced for the
vast majority of the professors
and students.
However, there is some
unexpected things that came up.
On top of there being
second syllable words that
were voiced that had
distinct tones to them,
there were also first syllable
words that had a voicing.
At first, I was really
alarmed when I saw this.
But there actually turned
out to be a pattern.
And that was that these
syllables were pronounced with
less emphasis-- less stress--
than the syllable either
preceding it or following it.
So this created a
neutralizing effect.
So while the voicing allophone
checked out with both groups,
the rule needed to
change a little bit.
So it wasn't the second syllable
of disyllabic words become
voiced with neutral tone.
It was the unstressed syllable
of disyllabic words becoming
voiced.
Next, moving on to
the N assimilation.
We can see from the
first two blocks
that for both the
professors and the students,
that you have N becoming M when
it was presented in front of M
for ease of articulation,
just like we do in English.
However, it appears that in
Mandarin this N assimilation
is a whole lot more
limited than in English.
Because in the
next two, where we
have N changing to a
alveolar nasal or N changing
to alveolar dental nasal--
these two right here--
they did not exist
with the professors.
For the students though, at
least for the alveolar one,
they produced it, not picking
up that there was a limitation.
On top of this, there
was an added element
that Mandarin has
that English does not.
And that is that N will
become deleted or null when
it is in front of a consonant
for ease of articulation
that way instead
of morphing to it.
So we can see this in the
word [SPEAKING MANDARIN]..
And also with the word
[SPEAKING MANDARIN]..
With [SPEAKING MANDARIN],,
we'll see a little bit later,
y in front of a vowel
is like this, too.
So again, the rule checks out.
But it's a whole lot
more limited in English
than it is in Mandarin.
And only the students
were able to catch up
on those limitations.
So finally looking at the
codas becoming onsets.
Here it looks a
little bit random.
We've got some students
producing the N to over
on the onset of the
second syllable,
along with professors as well,
for some words and others not.
But there is actually
a pattern to this too.
So we'll just look at one
more for time's sake today.
And that is [SPEAKING MANDARIN].
For when professors
and students put
the stress in the
second syllable,
what they would do
in order to make
that second syllable a whole
lot more emphasized, is
they would put a glottal
stop in front of that vowel
creating a consonant or an onset
to prevent the N from moving.
If the stress was put on
the first syllable however,
there was no consonant
for over here
to block N from coming over.
So the first syllable, you can
have a coda of becoming onset.
If it's in the second
syllable, you've
got this new rule of
glottal stop epenthesis
and you don't have that
coda becoming an onset.
So going back to where we had
the N assimilation where we saw
[SPEAKING MANDARIN],,
where that N was deleted,
that is because you have
this glottal stop serving
as it's consonant.
All right.
So the significance, going
back to my initial question,
of whether or not students
are able to pick up
on these allophonic changes on
their own, studying Mandarin,
or if they need a
formal instruction.
For the voicing, we
saw from the tables
that they produce the same
voicing as the professors,
for the vast majority of them.
However, there were some random
voicing that happen, as well.
So English is a language
that has a whole lot of voice
consonants.
So it may have
been just influence
from English transferring over.
And this was certainly the case
with N assimilation and codas
becoming onsets, as
we saw with those.
Students either over
applied N assimilation
using more of the English
than the Mandarin ones,
not picking up on limitations
and the additional N deletion.
And for the codas
becoming onsets,
not always picking up on
that glottal stop epenthesis.
Now this study was not perfect.
I had a small pool of
professors and students
that I was working with.
And then the
spectrograms there, it
was impossible to not have
a whole lot of interference.
So sometimes the little
bar at the bottom
would get activated
when it shouldn't have.
And then it was only myself
that was analyzing these.
So having a second or more
opinion would've been helpful.
And then getting bottom
to the random voicing.
If it was English influenced
or if they actually
were striving to pick up on
the voicing rule in Mandarin.
And that is it.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]
Any questions?
Yes.
I know this wasn't a
part of your study,
but if you had to
recommend how to make
English speakers aware
of these things in a way
that was accessible to them,
how would you go about it?
So it would be a
little bit hard.
You would probably
want to have them
study the language
for a little bit
first to practice around what
the original sounds that are
in the language to begin with.
And then perhaps, at least
with the Spanish program,
what they do is they have
a class third year where
they go into the specific
allophonic changes
within the language to
help your pronunciation.
So perhaps, having a couple
of years of instruction
so that way you're familiar with
the regular phonemic inventory
of the language and then third
year, fine tuning it with those
allophones.
Yes.
In the case of Spanish
you were talking
about the various
different accents.
Yes.
And so you would put
a lot of complexity
then too into
Mandarin or beyond.
I'm curious, do you
envision doing something
like this with only Mandarin or
I would love to.
It seems like it would be an
immensely helpful thing to do
and really interesting, as well.
Yes.
I would like to.
Yes.
Would it be possible
to extend this research
to the dialects of Mandarin?
Or are you thinking
of doing that?
It would definitely
be interesting.
It would be a little
bit hard to conduct,
because there are just so
many different dialects
within Mandarin.
But definitely
would be interested
in trying to do that.
Yes.
Do you envision that knowledge
of linguistic allophones
or seeing phonetic
representations
with spectrograms would
help us language acquirers?
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure if the whole
scientific part of it would--
without the
spectrograms, I'm not
sure would be necessarily
all that helpful,
unless people were interested in
dissecting their own language.
But certainly knowing the rules
behind what they're producing.
I know that I've
found that personally
helpful in my
language acquisition
with both Spanish and Chinese.
All right.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
