Studies in Literature and Language
Perception of Consonants in Single Codas in English by Cantonese and Mandarin Speakers
Abstract
One’s native language (L1) would interfere with the perception of a foreign language because of the differences between the sound inventories and distributions in the two languages. Compared with English, the syllable structures of Cantonese and Mandarin are relatively simple. Mandarin has only two coda consonants /n/ and /ŋ/, while Cantonese has six: /p/,/t/,/k/,/m/,/n/,/ŋ/, both languages do not allow consonant clusters. However, English allows multiple consonants in syllable final position.
This study investigates Cantonese and Mandarin speakers’ perception of English consonants in single codas, and found that Cantonese who were learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) have advantages in the perception of English coda nasals and stops compared to the Mandarin speakers, but they have difficulty in identifying the voiced-voiceless contrasts in plosives. This is considered to be a result of negative transfer from their first language.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Chan, A. Y. W., & Li, D. C. S. (2000). English and cantonese phonology in contrast: Explaining cantonese ESL learners’ english pronunciation problems. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 13(1), 67-85.
Ding, H., Zhan, Y., Liao, S., & Yuan, J. (2018). Production of English stops by mandarin Chinese learners. Speech Prosody, 1, 13-16.
Ding, P. S., Bauer, R., & Benedict, P. K. (1999). Modern cantonese phonology. Language, 75(2).
Eckman, F. R. (1991). The structural conformity hypothesis and the acquisition of consonant clusters in the interlanguage of ESL learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 13(1), 23-41.
Flege, J. E. (1987). The production of “new” and “similar” phones in a foreign language: evidence for the effect of equivalence classification. Journal of Phonetics, 15(1), 47-65.
Hansen, J. G. (2001). Linguistic constraints on the acquisition of English syllable codas by native speakers of mandarin Chinese. Applied Lingustics, 22(3), 338-365.
Hongwei, D. (2014). An acoustic study on Chinese students’ pronunciation of German syllable consonant codas. Journal of School of Chinese Language and Culture Nanjing Normal University, 1(69), 5-24.
Odlin, T. (1989). Language transfer: Cross-linguistic influence in language learning. Cambridge University Press.
Rattanasone, N. X., & Demuth, K. (2014). The acquisition of coda consonants by Mandarin early child L2 learners of English. Bilingualism, 17(3), 646-659.
The jamovi project (2021). jamovi (Version 2.0.0) [Computer Software]. Retrieved from https://www.jamovi.org
Yaming, Z. (2015). Perception of English syllable-final consonants by Chinese speakers and Japanese speakers. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015), 2-4.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12800
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2022 Author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Share us to: 
Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/sll/submission/wizard
Please send your manuscripts to sll@cscanada.net，or sll@cscanada.org for consideration. We look forward to receiving your work.
We only use three mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; sll@cscanada.net; sll@cscanada.org
Articles published in Studies in Literature and Language are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).
STUDIES IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Editorial Office
Address: 1055 Rue Lucien-L'Allier, Unit #772, Montreal, QC H3G 3C4, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org
E-mail: office@cscanada.net; office@cscanada.org; caooc@hotmail.com
Copyright © 2010 Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 
