CFL learners’ Mandarin syllable-tone word production: effects of task and prior phonological and lexical learning

Jiang Liu; Seth Wiener

doi:10.1515/caslar-2021-0002

Article

CFL learners’ Mandarin syllable-tone word production: effects of task and prior phonological and lexical learning

Jiang Liu
Jiang Liu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. He received his PhD degree in Linguistics from the University of Kansas. His primary research areas are psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, phonetics and phonology. Before joining in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of South Carolina, he served as the Associate Director of Chinese Flagship Program at the University of Minnesota for three years.
and Seth Wiener
Seth Wiener is an Associate Professor of Second Language Acquisition and Chinese Studies in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He received his PhD degree from The Ohio State University and carries out research on speech learning and lexical processes using psycholinguistic methods. He is the Director of the Language Acquisition, Processing, and Pedagogy (LAPP) Lab at CMU and is an Associate Editor for the journal Applied Psycholinguistics.

Published/Copyright: March 30, 2021

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From the journal Chinese as a Second Language Research Volume 10 Issue 1

Abstract

This study examined beginner-level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners’ production of newly learned words in an image naming and pinyin-reading task. Fifteen L1-English CFL learners learned 10 tonal monosyllabic minimal pairs (e.g., shu1 and shu3) in a three-day sound-image word learning experiment. Ten of the 20 words were homophonous with previously learned words (e.g., participants already knew that shu1 means ‘book’), while the other 10 were not (e.g., no shu3 words had been learned). Ten of the 20 words had frequent phonology participants were familiar with (e.g., shi is a high token frequency syllable), while the other 10 had infrequent phonology (e.g., ku is a low token frequency syllable). On the last day of learning, participants performed an image naming task followed by a pinyin-reading task. The recoded word tokens from both tasks were then played to 10 native Chinese speakers who were asked to transcribe the words in pinyin. The results showed that overall word production in the pinyin-reading task was more accurate than image naming. The pinyin-reading advantage was robust, but homophone status and syllable token frequency also interacted with task type: learners produced syllables with high token frequency but without homophones equally well in the pinyin-reading and naming tasks. These results suggest phonological encoding in long-term memory based on pinyin orthography can be affected by learners’ prior phonological and lexical knowledge. Pedagogical applications and limitations of the study are discussed, as well.

摘要

本研究目的在于考察汉语初学者在学习完新词汇后, 在命名图片和拼音朗读任务中的发音情况。在三天的词汇学习实验中, 15名母语为英语的汉语学习者学习了10 对单音节词, 每对词由声调区分词义 (例如, 叔 shu1 和鼠 shu3) 。20个新词汇中的10 个词汇有之前学过的同音词 (例如, 书shu1) , 另外10个新词汇没有之前学过的同音词 (未学过 shu3这个音节声调组合) 。10个新词的音节是被试熟悉的 (例如, 音节shi) , 10个新词的音节是被试不熟悉的 (例如, 音节ku) 。在第三天学习结束后, 被试完成一个图片命名任务, 之后完成一个拼音朗读任务。我们将被试所录的音档播放给10名汉语母语者, 让其把听到的词转录成拼音。结果显示拼音朗读任务中的词汇发音正确度显著高于图片命名中的词汇发音。拼音朗读任务在词汇发音准确度方面优势明显, 但目标词是否有已学过的同音词以及目标词的音节频率也与发音任务产生交互效应, 结果显示高频音节无同音词的目标词的发音在拼音朗读中的准确度与图片命名的准确度没有显著差异。这种交互效应表明由拼音编码在长期记忆中的音系表征在词汇发音过程中是会受到学习者已有音系和词汇知识的影响的。我们也对本研究的一些教学意义和一些局限性进行了讨论。

Keywords: image naming; phonological and lexical knowledge; pinyin; word production

关键词: 图片命名; 拼音; 音系及词汇知识; 词汇发音

Corresponding author: Jiang Liu, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures and Linguistics Program, University of South Carolina,709 Humanities Office Building, 1620 College Street, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA, E-mail: jiangliu@mailbox.sc.edu

About the authors

Jiang Liu

Jiang Liu is an Assistant Professor of Chinese and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. He received his PhD degree in Linguistics from the University of Kansas. His primary research areas are psycholinguistics, second language acquisition, phonetics and phonology. Before joining in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of South Carolina, he served as the Associate Director of Chinese Flagship Program at the University of Minnesota for three years.

Seth Wiener

Seth Wiener is an Associate Professor of Second Language Acquisition and Chinese Studies in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He received his PhD degree from The Ohio State University and carries out research on speech learning and lexical processes using psycholinguistic methods. He is the Director of the Language Acquisition, Processing, and Pedagogy (LAPP) Lab at CMU and is an Associate Editor for the journal Applied Psycholinguistics.

Appendix

Experiment stimuli:

Homophone		Non-homophone
High syllable Token frequency	Low syllable token frequency	High syllable Token frequency	Low syllable token frequency
ta1 塌* ‘to collapse’	shu1 叔 ‘uncle’	ta3 塔* ‘pagoda’	shu3 鼠 ‘mouse’
ren2 仁* ‘nuts’	chen4 称^[1] ‘scale’	ren3 忍* ‘to tolerate’	chen2 沉 ‘to sink’
wan3 碗 ‘bowl’	jie3 解 ‘to untie’	wan2 丸 ‘(meat) ball’	jie1 接 ‘to pick up’
hai2 骸 ‘skeleton’	ku4 库* ‘warehouse’	hai3 海 ‘ocean’	ku1 哭* ‘to cry’
shi4 柿 ‘persimmon’	hong2 虹* ‘rainbow’	shi1 湿 ‘wetness’	hong1 烘* ‘to bake’

Words marked with the asterisk * were chosen in a subset of the data, which we used for testing the possible effect of Part of Speech (POS) on the word production.

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Published Online: 2021-03-30

Published in Print: 2021-05-26

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Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/caslar-2021-0002

Keywords for this article

image naming; phonological and lexical knowledge; pinyin; word production