Cross-language perception of mandarin lexical tones: comparison of listeners from Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese backgrounds

It is widely acknowledged that processing lexical tones is difficult for speakers from non-tonal language backgrounds. Furthermore, there is a split in the literature on cross-language tone processing, and whether native language experience with lexical tones plays a facilitative or inhibitory role is unresolved. This chapter presents results of empirical research that examined the perception of Mandarin lexical tones by native speakers of Burmese, Thai, and Vietnamese who were unfamiliar with Mandarin. A group of ten native Mandarin speakers participated as controls. The three languages of interest have their own tonal systems. Thus, adult native speakers of these languages may be expected to benefit from their first language knowledge/experience in the cross-language tone processing. Despite this expectation, the three groups of non-native speakers varied widely in their discrimination accuracy of six Mandarin tone pairs (Tone 1 vs. 2, Tone 1 vs. 3, Tone 1 vs. 4, Tone 2 vs. 3, Tone 2 vs. 4, Tone 3 vs. 4). They were also clearly less accurate than a control group of native Mandarin speakers. The results will be discussed in relation to language-general and language-specific phonetic characteristics of native and non-native tonal systems.