Peggy Mok

Production and perception of a sound change in progress: Tone merging in Hong Kong Cantonese

Cantonese has six lexical tones (T), but some tone pairs appear to be merging: T2 [25] vs. T5 [23], T3 [33] vs. T6 [22], and T4 [21] vs. T6 [22]. Twenty-eight merging participants and thirty control participants in Hong Kong were recruited for a perception experiment. Both accuracy rate and reaction time data were collected. Seventeen merging participants also participated in a production experiment. Predictive discriminant analysis of the fundamental frequency data and judgments by native transcribers were used to assess production accuracy. Results show that the merging participants still had six tone categories in production, although their “tone space” was more reduced. Tones with lower type frequency were more prone to change. The merging group was significantly slower in tone perception than the control group was. In illustrating the patterns of the ongoing tone merging process in Cantonese, this study contributes to a better understanding of the forces of sound change in general.

The acquisition of speech rhythm by three-year-old bilingual and monolingual children: Cantonese and English

This study investigates the acquisition of speech rhythm by Cantonese–English bilingual children and their age-matched monolingual peers. Languages can be classified in terms of rhythmic characteristics that define English as stress-timed and Cantonese as syllable-timed. Few studies have examined the concurrent acquisition of rhythmically different languages in bilingual children. This study uses data of six Cantonese–English bilingual children around age 3;0 and compares them with six monolingual children in each language using recently developed acoustic rhythmic metrics on consonantal, vocalic and syllabic intervals. Qualitative data on syllable structure complexity and vowel quality are also included. Results on syllable duration show that monolingual children display distinct rhythmic patterns while the differences between the two languages of the bilingual children are less distinct. Bilingual English has less durational variability than monolingual English. Bilingual children have a distinct phonological developmental trajectory from monolingual children, which is manifested in acquisition delay and is influenced by language dominance. This shows that the two phonologies interact at the prosodic level.

Effects of Vowel Duration and Vowel Quality on Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation

This work investigates how vowel duration and vowel quality affect degrees of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. The effects of these two factors on vowel-to-vowel coarticulation have previously received little study. Phonological durational differences due to vowel length distinction were examined in Thai. It was hypothesized that shorter vowel duration could result in more vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, and further that the vowel /a/ would allow more vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than /i/ or /u/ cross-linguistically. Thus, the susceptibility of different vowel qualities to vowel-to-vowel coarticulation was examined using Thai data. Results show that shorter vowel duration did not affect vowel-to-vowel coarticulation; and the lower the vowel, the more susceptible it is to coarticulation. Possible factors contributing to such patterns are discussed.

Does Vowel Inventory Density Affect Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation?

This study tests the output constraints hypothesis that languages with a crowded phonemic vowel space would allow less vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than languages with a sparser vowel space to avoid perceptual confusion. Mandarin has fewer vowel phonemes than Cantonese, but their allophonic vowel spaces are similarly crowded. The hypothesis predicts that Mandarin would allow more coarticulation than Cantonese. Eight native speakers of Cantonese and of Beijing Mandarin were recorded saying the target sequences /pV11pV2pV3/ (V = /i a u/) in carrier phrases. F1 and F2 frequencies were measured at vowel edge and midpoint, and were normalized for analyses. The results show that Cantonese and Mandarin do not differ in degree of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in either F1 or F2. In addition, unstressed vowels exhibit more coarticulation than stressed vowels. Carryover coarticulation exceeds anticipatory coarticulation in both F1 and F2. Unstressed vowels in the carryover position are the most susceptible to coarticulation. The results show that vowel inventory does not predict vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Fundamental assumptions of the output constraints hypothesis are evaluated to explain its failure in predicting language-specific patterns of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. The importance of syntagmatic relationships in coarticulation is also discussed.

Effects of consonant cluster syllabification on vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in English

This paper investigates how different syllable affiliations of intervocalic /st/ cluster affect vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in English. Very few studies have examined the effect of syllable structure on vowel-to-vowel coarticulation. Previous studies show that onset and coda consonants differ acoustically, articulatorily, perceptually and typologically. Onsets are stronger, more stable, more common and more distinguishable than codas. Since codas are less constrained, it was hypothesized that coda /st./ would allow more vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than onset /.st/. Three vowels (/i @? u/) were used to form the target sequences with the /st/ cluster in English: onset /CV.stVC/, heterosyllabic /CVs.tVC/, coda /CVst.VC/. F1 and F2 frequencies at vowel edges and the durations of the first vowel and the intervocalic consonants were measured from six speakers of Standard Southern British English. Factors included in the experiment are: Direction, Syllable Form, Target, Context. Results show that coda /st./ allows more vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than onset /.st/, and heterosyllabic /s.t/ is the most resistant among the Syllable Forms. Vowels in heterosyllabic /s.t/ are more extreme than in the other two Syllable Forms in the carryover direction. These findings suggest that vowel-to-vowel coarticulation is sensitive to different syllable structure with the same segmental composition. Possible factors contributing to the observed patterns are discussed.

Speech rhythm of monolingual and bilingual children at age 2;6: Cantonese and English

Previous studies have showed that at age 3;0, monolingual children acquiring rhythmically different languages display distinct rhythmic patterns while the speech rhythm patterns of the languages of bilingual children are more similar. It is unclear whether the same observations can be found for younger children, at 2;6. This study compared five Cantonese-English simultaneous bilingual children with five monolingual children in each language using both rhythmic metrics and qualitative data on syllable structure complexity and lexical stress. Results show that while the speech rhythms of monolingual children are different at 2;6, the rhythmic patterns of bilingual children are less distinct. This study investigates the speech rhythm development of Cantonese-English bilingual children at 2;6, and their age-matched monolingual peers. It is an extension of Mok (2011), who showed that at age 3;0, monolingual children acquiring English (stress-timed) and Cantonese (syllable-timed) display distinct rhythmic patterns while the differences between the two languages of the bilingual children are less distinct. Bilingual English has less durational variability than monolingual English. The phonological developmental trajectory of bilingual children is distinct from that of monolingual children, a distinction which is manifested in acquisition delay and is influenced by language dominance. In addition, Kehoe, Lleo and Rakow (2011) found similar patterns in the speech rhythm of monolingual and bilingual children at 3;0 acquiring Spanish and German: monolingual children are significantly different from each other, while bilingual children acquiring the same two languages were more similar. The main research question of the current study is whether such rhythmic patterns can also be observed at a younger age (2;6) for children acquiring Cantonese and English monolingually and bilingually. It is important to first point out that speech rhythm is a general term covering many phonological aspects * The author would like to thank the parents of several monolingual children for the monolingual data. She thanks the participants of the International Child Phonology Conference 2011 at York for their helpful suggestions. She also thanks the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, and Donald White for editing the manuscript.

Perception of Native English Reduced Forms in Adverse Environments by Chinese Undergraduate Students

Previous research has shown that learners of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) have difficulties in understanding connected speech spoken by native English speakers. Extending from past research limited to quiet listening condition, this study examined the perception of English connected speech presented under five adverse conditions, namely multi-talker babble noise, speech-shaped noise, factory noise, whispering and sad emotional tones. We tested a total of 64 Chinese ESL undergraduate students, using a battery of listening tasks. Results confirmed that the recognition of English native speech was more challenging for Chinese ESL learners under unfavorable listening conditions, in comparison to a noise-free listening condition. These findings carry significant implications for the importance of training and assessments on connected speech perception across various listening environments.

Tonogenesis in Seoul Korean and L3 Production of Korean stops by Cantonese- English Bilinguals

This paper aims to investigate how tonogenesis in Seoul Korean affects non-native language acquisition in a multilingual context with L1 Cantonese, L2 English and L3 Korean. We are also interested to examine the source and direction of crosslinguistic influences in the acquisition of VOT and F0 patterns which are used for the stop contrasts. Sixteen L3 Korean learners differing in proficiencies (beginning vs. intermediate) were recorded reading a list of words embedded in carrier sentences in the three languages. Results from acoustic analyses found that the learners did not merge VOTs for the Korean lax and aspirated stop contrast, but they showed the tendency for tonogenesis, such as their heavy use of f0 in producing different Korean stops. Furthermore, comparison between the beginners and the intermediate learners revealed various cross-linguistic influences: regressive transfer of f0 on L1 and L2, bidirectional interaction of f0 values between L2 and L3, and L1 influence on the production of VOT in L2 and L3. These findings suggest that L3 transfer happens in a cue-by-cue manner, i.e. VOT and f0 need to be accounted for separately.

Orthographic effects on the perception and production of L2 mandarin tones

Abstract Recent studies on orthographic effects on L2 phonology have typically investigated alphabetic writing systems and segmental contrasts with novice learners. The current study extends such investigation to compare orthographic effects of an opaque logographic system (Chinese characters) and a transparent schematic system (pinyin) on a suprasegmental feature (lexical tones) with experienced learners. A perception experiment of Mandarin tones by Cantonese L2 learners shows that pinyin was more beneficial for tone perception in monosyllabic words, while tones were better perceived in characters for disyllabic words. A production experiment reveals a similar pattern. Additionally, low performance learners were affected by orthographic differences more than high performance learners. The findings suggest that orthographic effects are not limited to alphabetic systems, and are dependent on task nature and learner proficiency. A transparent system may not always be easier than an opaque system.

Temporal coordination between focus prosody and pointing gestures in Cantonese

Abstract This study investigates the temporal relationship between focus prosody and co-speech pointing gestures in Hong Kong Cantonese. Previous studies have generally shown a close temporal proximity between prosodic and gestural prominence: Gestural prominence tends to be aligned with stressed syllables or words. However, this finding was based solely on studies of stress and pitch-accent languages, and no study has yet tested the phenomenon in a non-stress tone language. Ten native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese participated in a picture-verification task in which pointing was elicited along with verbal corrections. The acoustic results showed that the corrective focus was marked solely by an on-focus durational increase. The gestural results revealed that there was an alignment between prosodic and gestural prominence, as most of the gesture apices were produced within the focused words. However, in contrast to previous findings, no significant effect of F0 (tone) or focus position was found. Instead, most speakers consistently aligned their apices with the same syllable position in disyllables. Based on the current findings, the prosodic anchor of prosody-gesture alignment is suggested to be the focused word in this language.