Mandarin language learning by American students: A research study on orthographic influences on pronunication accuracy in second-language learners
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2016
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
The Critical Age Hypothesis states that language acquisition is inherent to humans, but that
humans lose this ability over time after passing through several critical age periods (Lenneberg
1967). One of these periods of particular importance is around the age of ll-14, after which
adolescent speakers who begin to study another language will struggle to develop the
competence of a native speaker, with particular difficulty in learning the phonetic inventory
(Krashen 1981). Furthermore, the theory of phonetic transfer suggests that aspects of the
phonetics of one's native language naturally influence the learning of the phonetics of a target
language (Gass and Selinker 1992).
This study finds significant evidence for language transfer in four adult, native Englishspeaking
learners of Mandarin Chinese. The similarity between Mandarin and English vowels [i]
often leads to positive transfer for the speakers. However, negative transfer is also present to a
large degree for these speakers. Relative vowel differences, such as the differing sounds for [u]
between English and Chinese, result in significant negative transfer and pronunciation errors. In
fact, negative transfer is present to some degree for most of the Chinese vowels. The subjects of
this study even mispronounce [i] on occasion, which would be impossible if relative sound
similarity or difference were the only influential factor. Thus, this thesis contends that
orthographic inputs also lead to negative transfer. For example, the pinyin (i) in a Chinese word
such as bin (~-'guest') is pronounced as [i]. Conversely, in English, this letter in the same
environment, 'bin,' is pronounced [I]. This incongruous mapping of orthography to phonetics
impacts American learners, who in this way are hindered by the use of pinyin before fully
mastering the Chinese phonetic system.