How Polish Students Develop Mandarin Pronunciation through Intensive Training

• Authors: Zajdler Ewa , Chu Man-ni
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Many studies (McBride-Chang et al., 2008; Bialystok et al., 2005) have shown that the syllable is the basic unit when learning Chinese pronunciation. This study attempts to explore how adult native speakers of Polish (non-tonal language with the alphabet based on Latin script) develop Chinese tonal syllables through intensive training at the beginning level. Students from the Faculty of Philology participated in a four-stage phonetic teaching program and experiment. First, learners exercise excessive articulation of vowels, practicing how to carry the tone. Secondly, students try to assign the meaning to the joined segmental and supra-segmental phonetic units. Then, acquisition of Chinese morphemes/lexemes is supported with characters to differentiate homophones in the learning process. Finally, students are trained to decode the heard syllables in a sequence into meaningful phases and sentences. Next, the pronunciation experiment in two series provides an insight into the development of the Chinese syllable production.

Keywords

EN

teaching Chinese; Polish native speakers; syllables; Chinese tones; tone production

• Publisher: Instytut Komunikacji Specjalistycznej i Interkulturowej
• Journal: Applied Linguistics Papers
• Year: 2019
• Issue: 26/2
• Pages: 103-115

Dates

published

2019-06-24

Contributors

author

Zajdler Ewa

• Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie

author

Chu Man-ni

• Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei

References

• Bialystok, E./ C. McBride-Chang/ G. Luk (2005), Bilingualism, language proficiency, and learning to read in two writing systems, (in:) ,,Journal of Educational Psychology” 97, 580–590.
• Cyran, E./ E. Gussmann (1999), Consonantal clusters and Governing Relations: Polish initial consonant sequences, (in:) H. van der Hulst/ N. Ritter (eds.), The Syllable. Views and Facts. Berlin, 219–247.
• Demenko, G./ B. Möbius/ B. Andreeva/ F. Zimmerer / J. Jügler / M. OlechowiczPopiel (2014), Differences of pitch profiles in Germanic and Slavic Languages, (w:) ,,Interspeech”, 1307–1311. (URL https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/archive_papers/interspeech_2014/i14_1307.pdf). [Pobrano 13.05.2019].
• Ding, H./ R. Hoffmann/ O. Jokisch (2011), An Investigation of Tone Perception and Production in German Learners of Mandarin, (in:) ,,Archives of Acoustics” 36.3, 509–518.
• Guo, J.-H.郭俊弘/ L. Huei-Mei劉惠美/ H. Kuei-Chun黃桂君/ W. Hsiao-Chuan王小 川/ T. Feng-Ming曹峰銘 (2010), 修改語音基頻曲線與低通濾波處理影響聽障 學生國語聲調聽辨成效之研究, (in:) 特殊教育研究學刊35.3, 77–101.
• Hallé, P.A./ Y.-C. Chang/ C. T. Best (2004), Identification and discrimination of Mandarin Chinese tones by Mandarin Chinese vs. French listeners, (in:) ,,Journal of Phonetics” 32, 395–421.
• Hojan, E./ E. Skrodzka (2005), Audiologiczne aspektu akustyki i psychoakustyki, (in:) M. Śliwińska-Kowalska (ed.), Audiologia kliniczna. Łódź, 97–106.
• Howie, J.I. (1976), On the domain of tone in Mandarin, (in:) ,,Phonetica” 30, 129– 148.
• Jassem, W. (2003), Illustrations of the IPA: Polish, (in:) ,Journal of the International Phonetic Association” 33.1, 103–107.
• Jassem, W. (1992), Acoustic-phonetic variability of Polish vowels, (in:) ,,Archives of Acoustics” 17, 217–233.
• Jongman, A./ Y. Wang / C.B. Moore/ J.A. Sereno (2006), Perception and Production of Mandarin Chinese tones, (in:) P. Li / L.H. Tan / E. Bates / O.J.L. Tzeng (eds.), The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics.Vol.1. Chinese, 209–217.
• Kujalowicz, A./ E. Zajdler (2009), Language activation and lexical processing by Polish learners of English and Chinese – the role of learning experience in TLA, (in:) ,,International Journal of Multilingualism” 6.1, 85–104.
• McBride-Chang, C./ X. Tong / H. Shu et. al. (2008), , (in:) ,,Scientific Studies of Reading” 12.2, 171–194.
• Maddieson, I. (2010), Variation in co-variation: The search for explanatory principles, (in:) C. Fougeron/ B. Kühnert/ M. D'Imperio/ N. Vallée (eds.), Laboratory Phonology 10. Berlin, 133–150.
• Nooteboom, S.G. (1997), The prosody of speech: Melody and rhythm, (in:) W.J. Hardcastle/ J. Laver (eds.), The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences. Oxford, 640–673.
• Szpilewski, E./ B. Piórkowska/ J. Rafałko/ B. Łobanow/ V. Kiselow/ L. Cyrulnik (2004), Polish TTS in Multi-Voice Slavonic Languages Speech Synthesis System, (in:) SPECOM’ 2004 Proceedings, 9th International Conference Speech and Computer 20-22 Sept. 2004. Saint-Petersburg, Russia. 565–570. (URL https://ssrlab.by/wp-content/uploads/2004/spc4_565.pdf). [Retrieved 13.05.2019].
• Tadeusiewicz, R. (1988), Sygnał mowy [ang. Speech Signal], Wydawnictwa Komunikacji i Łączności. Warszawa.
• Tseng, C-Y. (1990), An acoustic phonetic study on tones in Mandarin Chinese. Institute of History & Philology Academia Sinica, Special Publications No. 94. Taipei, Taiwan.
• Wagner, A./ A. Braun (2003), Is voice quality language-dependent? Acoustic analyses based on speakers of three different languages, (in:) Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003). Adelaide, 651–654.
• Wang, Y./ A. Jongman/ J. A. Sereno (2006), L2 Acquisition and Processing of Mandarin Tone, (in:) P. Li/ L. H. Tan/ E. Bates/ O. J. L. Tzeng (eds.), The Handbook of East Asian Psycholinguistics. Vol.1. Chinese. 250–256.
• Węcki, J. (Publisher) (1830), Rozprawy i wnioski o ortografii polskiéj przez deputacyą od Król. Towarzystwa Warsz. Przyjaciół Nauk wyznaczoną. [ang. Theses and findings on Polish ortography by the deputy of Royal Society of Friends of Science].
• Wu, X. / L. Hua (2008), Perception of Mandarin Tones by Mandarin and English Listeners, (in:) ,,Journal of Chinese Language and Computing” 18.4, 175–187.
• Xu, Y. (1997), Contextual tonal variations in Mandarin, (in:) ,,Journal of Phonetics” 25, 61–83.
• Yue, J. (2016), Tone-word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: Influences of lexicallevel representations. Groningen. [URL http://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/27655784/Complete_thesis.pdf. [Retrieved 15.09.2017.]
• Zajdler, E./ A. Stal (2013), Umiejętności receptywne a realizacja tonemów języka chińskiego [ang. Perception skills and tonemes production in Chinese], (in:) ,,Applied Linguistics” 8, 153–164.
• http://livesound.pl/tutoriale/artykuly/4629-zrozumialosc-mowy [Retrieved 15.09.2017.]

Identifiers

ISSN

2544-9354