以英文為母語的二語學習者對中文破擦音的習得

THE ACQUISITION OF MANDARIN AFFRICATES BY AMERICAN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS

第二語言中破擦音的習得經常給二語學習者造成困難。本文基於一個發音實驗和兩個感知實驗研究以英文為母語的初、中級學習者對六個中文破擦音的發音與感知。感知實驗顯示二語學習者在區分實驗中與母語持有者無差異，但在識別實驗中二語學習者表現不及母語持有者，各破擦音之間的習得並沒有差異。發生實驗揭示二語學習者的破擦音在多個聲學指標上異於母語者。本文結尾討論了二語發音和感知之間的複雜關係，並探討了母語、二語和二語教學法對課堂二語習得的影響。

The acquisition of new affricate contrasts in a second language (L2) often poses difficulties for L2 learners. This study examined the perception and production of six Mandarin affricates by beginning and intermediate American L2 learners using one production and two perceptual (i.e., identification and discrimination) tasks. The results of the perceptual tasks showed that the L2 learners performed as equally well as the native speakers in the discrimination task, but did not perform as well as the native speakers in the identification task, and that the difficulty in the identification task was not consonant-specific. The results of the production task showed that the affricates produced by the L2 learners differ from those produced by the native speakers along several acoustic dimensions (center of gravity, skewness, ampRatio, and frication duration). The study concludes by discussing the complex interaction between L2 speech production and perception, as well as the roles of the L1, L2, and L2 pedagogy in shaping instructed second language acquisition.