Mandarin Speakers’ Perception of Accented L2-English: The Effects of Accent, Linguistic Experience, and L2 Proficiency

Abstract

In much previous research, language listeners were found to perform differently when listening to a second language (L2) spoken in foreign/native accents. Influential factors have not been ascertained. This study aimed to gain new insights into this issue. 82 Mandarin speakers of different L2 (English) proficiency and different degrees of familiarity with Cantonese, Thai, and Yorkshire accent participated in the study. The stimuli were 40 English sentences with a noun as the last word (stimulus word). The stimulus words were gated with gate 0 revealing no phonological information, gate 1 displaying the first 40 ms of it, gate 2 having an additional 40 ms, etc., accumulating until the end of the word was revealed. The sentences were spoken in the accent of Mandarin, Yorkshire, Cantonese, and Thai. The participants were asked to write down the stimulus words each time after they heard a gated sentence. The results indicated that the participants required significantly less phonological information to correctly recognize the stimuli spoken in their own and Yorkshire accent than in Thai and Cantonese accent. Moreover, the participants’ degree of familiarity with the accents and their L2-English proficiency both had a significant effect on their perceptual performance.

Keywords

• perception
• accent
• Thai
• Cantonese
• Mandarin
• English

Mandarin Konuşucularının Aksanlı İngilizce Algısı: Aksan, Dilbilimsel Deneyim, ve İngilizce Yeterlilik Düzeyinin Etkileri

Öz

Yapılan birçok araştırma dinleyicilerin yabancı bir dili yerli ya da yabancı bir aksandan dinlerken, dinleme performanslarının farklılık gösterdiğini ortaya koymuştur. Ancak bu durumu etkileyen faktörler tam olarak ortaya konulamamıştır. Bu çalışmanın amacı bu duruma ilişkin yeni anlayışlar edinmektir. İngilizceyi yabancı dil olarak konuşan farklı yeterlilik düzeylerine sahip ve Kantonca, Tayca ve Yorkshire aksanlarına farklı düzeylerde yakınlığı olan katılımcılardan oluşan 82 Mandarin konuşucusu bu çalışmada yer almıştır. Uyaranlar, son kelimesi ad (uyaran kelime) olan 40 adet İngilizce cümleden oluşmaktadır. Çalışma, söylenen kelimeleri tanımaya ilişkin süreci irdeleyen gating paradigm yöntemine göre tasarlanmıştır. Cümleler Mandarin, Yorkshire, Kantonca ve Tayca aksanlarında konuşulmuştur. Katılımcılardan bir gated cümle duyduktan sonra her seferinde uyaran kelimeleri yazmaları istenmiştir. Araştırma sonucunda, konuşmacıların Kantonca ve Tayca aksanlarında söylenen cümlelere nazaran kendi aksanlarında ve Yorkshire aksanında söylenmiş uyaranları doğru bir şekilde anlayabilmeleri için çok daha az fonolojik bilgiye gereksinim duydukları ortaya çıkmıştır. Ayrıca, katılımcıların bu aksanlara olan yakınlıkları ve yabancı dil olarak İngilizce yeterlilik düzeylerinin, algısal performanslarında anlamlı bir etkiye sahip olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• algı
• aksan
• İngilizce
• Mandarin
• Kantonca
• Tayca

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