Identification Of Lexical Tones In Mandarin Chinese By Uygur Students Of Different Proficiency Levels

Present paper based on spontaneous speech addresses the Uygur students'perception of Mandarin Chinese lexical tones in different tonal contexts by contrasting the Second Language learners (Uygur students of three different proficiency levels of Mandarin Chinese) and the First Language learners (Han Chinese students). Further more, present study focuses on the intelligibility of Uygur speakers with Uygur-accent Chinese to Han Chinese listeners and Uygur listeners. Therefore, tone identification experiment and intelligibility experiment were adopted. 90 Uygur students participated the experiments were divided into three groups (higher level, medial level and lower level Uygur students) according to their HSK scores.Present paper intends to investigate following questions: (1) To testify whether Tone 2 is the most difficult one for Uygur students to perceive. (2) To what extend the tonal contextual variation may influence Uygur students'perception of lexical tones. (3) To find out what is the intelligibility of Uygur-accent Chinese to both Han Chinese listeners and Uygur listeners. (4) Is tone perception affected by the second language learning experience—the proficiency levels of Mandarin Chinese?The results of tone identification indicated that Uygur students often mix Tone 2 and Tone 3 in perception. Tone 2 and Tone 3 are more difficult for Uygur students in perception. Therefore, the tone acquisition order of second language learners (Uygur students) can be generalized: Tone 1 and Tone 4 acquire firstly, and then Tone 2 and Tone 3.The result of intelligibility experiment showed Uygur-accent Chinese does not always more intelligible to non-native listeners (Uygur listeners) who shared the same first language. It depends on the experience of second language. The more inexperienced group of non-native learners, the utterance of non-native speakers with shared first language will be more intelligible to them.