The Production of Chinese Affricates /ts/ and /tsh/ by Native Urdu Speakers

Previous studies have shown that learners with different native language backgrounds have common difficulties in learning Chinese affricates but demonstrate in various patterns. While few studies investigated this issue of native Urdu speakers. To address the production of Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/ by native Urdu speakers, speech materials, produced by two groups of subjects with different Chinese proficiency, were selected from the BLCU-SAIT speech corpus. The error rate and error types of their production of Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/ have been discussed after transcription and data analysis. The results show that though there are no counterparts of Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/ in Urdu, the error and the acquisition pattern of these two affricates, to some extent, affected by individual differences of their roles in Urdu except universal similarities and differences between two languages. The findings of this study shed some light on second language learning and teaching.

[1]  J. Flege,et al.  Talker and listener effects on degree of perceived foreign accent. , 1992, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[2]  Fred R. Eckman,et al.  THE ROLE OF NATIVE LANGUAGE PHONOLOGY IN THE PRODUCTION OF L2 CONTRASTS , 2012, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[3]  v) is Really a Problem Sound for Thai Speakers. , 2001 .

[4]  Gordon D. A. Brown,et al.  Serial Control of Phonology in Speech Production: A Hierarchical Model , 2000, Cognitive Psychology.

[5]  A. Jongman,et al.  American Chinese learners' acquisition of L2 Chinese affricates /ts/ and /tsh/ , 2012 .

[7]  R. Lado,et al.  Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers , 1957 .

[8]  Larry Selinker.  Fossilization as Simplification , 1993 .

[9]  周彬彬,et al.  Interlanguage : forty years later , 2014 .

[10]  R. Jakobson.  Child Language, Aphasia and Phonological Universals , 1980 .

[11]  Roy C. Major,et al.  Phonological Similarity, Markedness, and Rate of L2 Acquisition , 1987, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[12]  Jinsong Zhang,et al.  Developing a Chinese L2 speech database of Japanese learners with narrow-phonetic labels for computer assisted pronunciation training , 2010, INTERSPEECH.

[13]  J. Flege.  The production of "new" and "similar" phones in a foreign language: evidence for the effect of equivalence classification , 1987 .

[14]  Wei Li,et al.  Improving Mandarin Tone Recognition Based on DNN by Combining Acoustic and Articulatory Features Using Extended Recognition Networks , 2018, J. Signal Process. Syst..

[15]  Stephen Krashen,et al.  Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition , 1982 .

[16]  R. Major,et al.  The Similarity Differential Rate Hypothesis , 1996 .

[17]  Roy C. Major,et al.  THE ONTOGENY MODEL: EVIDENCE FROM L2 ACQUISITION OF SPANISH r , 1986 .

[18]  I. R. MacKay,et al.  Native Italian speakers' perception and production of English vowels. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[19]  R. Suter,et al.  PREDICTORS OF PRONUNCIATION ACCURACY IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING1 , 1976 .

[20]  Robert J. Marzano,et al.  Common Errors of Spanish Speakers Learning English. , 1979 .