Perception of Different Tone Contrasts at Sub-Lexical and Lexical Levels by Dutch Learners of Mandarin Chinese.

ABSTRACT: This study explores the difficulties in distinguishing different lexical tone contrasts at both sub-lexical and lexical levels for beginning and advanced Dutch learners of Mandarin, using a sequence-recall task and an auditory lexical decision task. In both tasks, the Tone 2-Tone 3 contrast is most prone to errors for both groups of learners. A significant improvement in the advanced group was found for this tone contrast in the sub-lexical sequence recall task, but not in the lexical decision task. This is taken as evidence that utilizing tones in on-line spoken word recognition is more complex and demanding for L2 learners than in a memory-based task. The results of the lexical decision task also revealed that advanced learners have developed a stronger sensitivity to Tone 1 compared to

SUBMITTER: Zou T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9207513 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature