Mandarin Speakers’ Perception of English Stress and Pure Tone: An Investigation on the F0, Duration and Amplitude

• Main Authors: Kuo, Chien-Min, 郭健民
• Other Authors: Ning, Li-Hsin
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/vh6327

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 106 === This study examined Mandarin speakers’ perception of English lexical stress and the relation between stress perception and pure tone perception. One group of native English speakers and two groups of Mandarin speakers with two different English proficiency levels were asked to take a stress perception test and a pure tone perception test. A disyllabic nonsense word was pronounced as a noun form with stress on the first syllable and as a verb form with stress on the second syllable. The two forms were synthesized into tokens varying in F0, duration and amplitude in the stressed syllable. In the stress perception test, the participants were required to locate the stress of the token they heard each time. The participants had to respond on a five-point Likert-scale based on their certainty about the location of the stress. In the pure tone perception test, each time, one pattern consisting of two pure tones was played to the participant. The pure tone patterns were synthesized to vary in F0, duration and amplitude in the way similar to the noun and verb forms of the nonsense word. The participants had to respond on a three-point Likert scale based on their certainty about the difference between the two tones. It was found that the Mandarin speakers’ use of acoustic cues for stress did not differ from English speakers. The two groups of Mandarin speakers with different English proficiency levels also did not differ in their use of acoustic cues for stress. The participants used F0 as a cue for stress in noun and duration as a cue in verb. It appeared that among the three acoustic cues (i.e., F0, duration and amplitude), the cue used for stress perception were the most salient one. F0 was the most salient cue in the noun form, while duration was the most salient one in the verb form. In the pure tone perception test, the three groups used both F0 and duration as cues for both sets of pure tones (i.e., one set synthesized based on the noun form and the other based on the verb form). Some similarities were found between pure tone perception and stress perception. In the perception of the noun and that of the pure tones synthesized based on the noun, F0 was a more important acoustic cue than duration. In the perception of the verb and that of the pure tones synthesized based on the verb, duration was a more important acoustic cue than F0. The similarities between pure tone perception and stress perception indicate that pure tone perception might be related to stress perception. In addition to the major findings above, this study has also found that English speakers tended to be less certain about their stress perception in an experimental scenario, which was revealed by the Likert scale test adopted in this study. In addition, it was found that the exposure to stress patterns varying in F0, duration and amplitude might facilitate stress perception.