A Tale of Five Fricatives: Consonantal Contrast in Heritage Speakers of Mandarin

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Chang, Charles B.
Haynes, Erin F.
Yao, Yao
Rhodes, Russell
Contributor
Abstract

This study investigated the production of five Mandarin and English sibilant fricatives by heritage speakers of Mandarin in comparison to native speakers and late learners. Almost all speakers were found to distinguish the Mandarin retroflex and alveolo-palatal, as well as the Mandarin alveolo-palatal and English palato-alveolar. However, fewer distinguished the Mandarin retroflex and English palato-alveolar or the Mandarin and English alveolars, with the majority of heritage speakers falling into this group of "distinguishers" in both cases. These results indicate that heritage speakers, in addition to most late learners, do not have much trouble with the Mandarin post-alveolar contrast, and furthermore, that while native speakers and late learners of Mandarin tend to merge similar Mandarin and English sounds, heritage speakers tend to keep them apart. Thus, of the three groups heritage speakers appear to be the best at maintaining contrast between categories both within and across languages.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2009-03-23
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection