Prominence marking in second language Chinese tones
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Hang Zhang
Abstract
Focal prominence in Chinese is expressed mainly by expanding pitch range, intensity and duration, but not by changing the general pitch shape of lexical tones. This poses a great challenge for adult learners of Chinese. This paper investigates how forty English and Japanese speaking learners of Chinese mark Chinese focal prominence (specifically, narrow focus) by analyzing the error patterns made in non-native tonal production of monosyllabic and disyllabic focused words. The research data suggests that the main source of error stems from first language transfer of prosodic structures, although the interlanguage tonal grammars are restricted by some phonological universals. Pedagogical implications are offered at the end of this chapter.
Abstract
Focal prominence in Chinese is expressed mainly by expanding pitch range, intensity and duration, but not by changing the general pitch shape of lexical tones. This poses a great challenge for adult learners of Chinese. This paper investigates how forty English and Japanese speaking learners of Chinese mark Chinese focal prominence (specifically, narrow focus) by analyzing the error patterns made in non-native tonal production of monosyllabic and disyllabic focused words. The research data suggests that the main source of error stems from first language transfer of prosodic structures, although the interlanguage tonal grammars are restricted by some phonological universals. Pedagogical implications are offered at the end of this chapter.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgments xi
- Integrating Chinese linguistic research and language teaching and learning xiii
- The emergence of verb argument structure in Mandarin Chinese 1
- A corpus linguistics approach to the research and teaching of Chinese as a second language 13
- Facilitating language learning 33
- An ERP study of the processing of Mandarin classifiers 59
- Explicit, implicit and metalinguistic knowledge in L2 Chinese 81
- Metalinguistic awareness and self-repair in Chinese language learning 97
- De-stressed words in Mandarin: drawing parallel with English 121
- Prosody and discourse functions of ranhou 然后 145
- Patterns of plural NP + dou (都) expressions in conversational discourse and their pedagogical implications 169
- Prominence marking in second language Chinese tones 195
- A multi-dimensional corpus study of mixed compounds in Chinese 215
- Index 239
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Contributors vii
- Acknowledgments xi
- Integrating Chinese linguistic research and language teaching and learning xiii
- The emergence of verb argument structure in Mandarin Chinese 1
- A corpus linguistics approach to the research and teaching of Chinese as a second language 13
- Facilitating language learning 33
- An ERP study of the processing of Mandarin classifiers 59
- Explicit, implicit and metalinguistic knowledge in L2 Chinese 81
- Metalinguistic awareness and self-repair in Chinese language learning 97
- De-stressed words in Mandarin: drawing parallel with English 121
- Prosody and discourse functions of ranhou 然后 145
- Patterns of plural NP + dou (都) expressions in conversational discourse and their pedagogical implications 169
- Prominence marking in second language Chinese tones 195
- A multi-dimensional corpus study of mixed compounds in Chinese 215
- Index 239
