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Music and language learning

Effect of musical training on learning L2 speech contrasts
  • Terry L. Gottfried
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Language Experience in Second Language Speech Learning
This chapter is in the book Language Experience in Second Language Speech Learning

Abstract

Research in second language learning has found correlations between general intelligence, musical ability, and success in learning the second language. The studies reported here concern the extent to which university conservatory students are better at perceiving and producing unfamiliar linguistic tones in Mandarin. In Experiment 1, native speakers of American English with musical training performed significantly better than non-musicians when determining whether a sine-wave tone went up, down, or remained the same in pitch. Musicians also performed significantly better than non-musicians when asked to identify the four distinctive tones of Mandarin (high-level, mid-rising, lowdipping, high-falling), which had analogous shifts in fundamental frequency to those of the sine-wave stimuli. Accuracy on the Mandarin tones for both groups was relatively low since listeners were not trained on the phonemic contrasts. Experiment 2 compared musicians and non-musicians on discrimination and imitation of these unfamiliar tones. Listeners were presented with two different Mandarin words that had either the same or different tones; listeners indicated whether the tones were same or different. All listeners had significantly more difficulty discriminating between mid-rising and low-dipping tones than with other contrasts. Listeners with music conservatory training showed significantly greater accuracy in their discrimination. Likewise, musicians’ spoken imitations of Mandarin were rated as significantly more native-like than those of nonmusicians. These findings suggest that musicians may have abilities or training that facilitate their perception and production of Mandarin tones. However, further research is needed to determine whether this advantage transfers to language learning situations.

Abstract

Research in second language learning has found correlations between general intelligence, musical ability, and success in learning the second language. The studies reported here concern the extent to which university conservatory students are better at perceiving and producing unfamiliar linguistic tones in Mandarin. In Experiment 1, native speakers of American English with musical training performed significantly better than non-musicians when determining whether a sine-wave tone went up, down, or remained the same in pitch. Musicians also performed significantly better than non-musicians when asked to identify the four distinctive tones of Mandarin (high-level, mid-rising, lowdipping, high-falling), which had analogous shifts in fundamental frequency to those of the sine-wave stimuli. Accuracy on the Mandarin tones for both groups was relatively low since listeners were not trained on the phonemic contrasts. Experiment 2 compared musicians and non-musicians on discrimination and imitation of these unfamiliar tones. Listeners were presented with two different Mandarin words that had either the same or different tones; listeners indicated whether the tones were same or different. All listeners had significantly more difficulty discriminating between mid-rising and low-dipping tones than with other contrasts. Listeners with music conservatory training showed significantly greater accuracy in their discrimination. Likewise, musicians’ spoken imitations of Mandarin were rated as significantly more native-like than those of nonmusicians. These findings suggest that musicians may have abilities or training that facilitate their perception and production of Mandarin tones. However, further research is needed to determine whether this advantage transfers to language learning situations.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Dedication ix
  4. Alphabetical List of Contributors xi
  5. Acknowledgments xv
  6. Biographical Note xvii
  7. PART I: The nature of L2 speech learning
  8. The study of second language speech learning 3
  9. Nonnative and second-language speech perception 13
  10. Cross-language phonetic similarity of vowels 35
  11. Investigating the role of attention in phonetic learning 57
  12. You are what you eat phonetically 79
  13. PART II: The concept of foreign accent
  14. Nativelike pronunciation among late learners of French as a second language 99
  15. Second language acquisition of a regional dialect of American English by native Japanese speakers 117
  16. Acoustic variability and perceptual learning 135
  17. PART III: Consonants and vowels
  18. Strategies for Realization of L2-Categories 153
  19. Temporal remnants from Mandarin in nonnative English speech 167
  20. Cross-language consonant identification 185
  21. The relationship between identification and discrimination in cross-language perception 201
  22. PART IV: Beyond consonants and vowels
  23. Music and language learning 221
  24. Behavioral and cortical effects of learning a second language 239
  25. The perception of tones and phones 259
  26. Prosody in second language acquisition 281
  27. PART V: Emerging issues
  28. Implications of James E. Flege’s research for the foreign language classroom 301
  29. Speech learning, lexical reorganization, and the development of word recognition by native and non-native English speakers 315
  30. Phonemic errors in different word positions and their effects on intelligibility of non-native speech 331
  31. The graphical basis of phones and phonemes 349
  32. References 367
  33. Author Index 399
  34. Subject Index 405
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.17.21got

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Dedication ix
  4. Alphabetical List of Contributors xi
  5. Acknowledgments xv
  6. Biographical Note xvii
  7. PART I: The nature of L2 speech learning
  8. The study of second language speech learning 3
  9. Nonnative and second-language speech perception 13
  10. Cross-language phonetic similarity of vowels 35
  11. Investigating the role of attention in phonetic learning 57
  12. You are what you eat phonetically 79
  13. PART II: The concept of foreign accent
  14. Nativelike pronunciation among late learners of French as a second language 99
  15. Second language acquisition of a regional dialect of American English by native Japanese speakers 117
  16. Acoustic variability and perceptual learning 135
  17. PART III: Consonants and vowels
  18. Strategies for Realization of L2-Categories 153
  19. Temporal remnants from Mandarin in nonnative English speech 167
  20. Cross-language consonant identification 185
  21. The relationship between identification and discrimination in cross-language perception 201
  22. PART IV: Beyond consonants and vowels
  23. Music and language learning 221
  24. Behavioral and cortical effects of learning a second language 239
  25. The perception of tones and phones 259
  26. Prosody in second language acquisition 281
  27. PART V: Emerging issues
  28. Implications of James E. Flege’s research for the foreign language classroom 301
  29. Speech learning, lexical reorganization, and the development of word recognition by native and non-native English speakers 315
  30. Phonemic errors in different word positions and their effects on intelligibility of non-native speech 331
  31. The graphical basis of phones and phonemes 349
  32. References 367
  33. Author Index 399
  34. Subject Index 405
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