Li, BeiBeiLiDr. YANG YikeChen, SiSiChenHe, YunjuanYunjuanHe2024-03-252024-03-252019Li, B., Yang, Y., Chen, S., & He, Y. (2019 May 15). A comparison of training effects on non-native tone sandhi production between American English and Cantonese speakers. 177th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Louisville.http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11861/9157Previous studies suggest that productions of Mandarin tone sandhi by both American English speakers and Cantonese speakers were perceived more native-like after a laboratory perceptual training, whereas little is known about the effects of tonal or non-tonal backgrounds. Ten Cantonesespeaking trainees and ten American English-speaking trainees matched in age and Mandarin proficiency were recruited to the pre- and post-training recording sessions. Elicited with audio and visual stimuli, participants naturally produced disyllabic real and wug words where the two Mandarin tonesandhi rules (T3 + T1/T2/T4 sandhi and T3 + T3 sandhi rules) should be applied. In total, 7680 sandhi syllables obtained from two sessions were perceptually evaluated by two phonetically trained Mandarin-speaking raters on a 101-point scale. Statistical results indicated that native tonal/non-tonal backgrounds influence Mandarin learners’ improvement in the two sandhi rules differently. The Cantonese trainees outperformed the English trainees in the sandhi of T3 + T1/T2/T4 before training, and the two groups had statistically comparable performance after training, although both groups exhibited significant improvement. For the sandhi in T3 + T3, improvement occurred for the Cantonese trainees while not for the American trainees aftertraining, suggesting that the successful learning of phonological T3 sandhi rule may require a tonal background.enConference Paper