Japanese Learners' Acquisition Of The Tone Of Voice Variation Of Mandarin Tongue

Variability has been the subject of much debate in recent years in the study of learner interlanguage. This article presented empirical evidence to investigate variability in the performance of retroflex zh ch sh by Japanese learners of Mandarin. In the study, the thesis intended to explore how linguistic context and situational context influenced Japanese learners' production of retroflex zh ch sh, and described the dynamic progress of acquisiton.The present study consisted of three parts:Experiment 1: It examined how the four different following vowels and the four Chinese tones influenced Japanese learners' production of retroflex zh ch sh. The result showed Japanese learners who had learned Chinese just for 3-4 months were progressively less accurate when the retroflex was followed by l\l.Experiment 2: Two different tasks(the reading of word lists,the reading of dialognes) were used to elicit data and we found that the use of the target-like variant of retroflex zh sh was used more frequently when subjects were reading word lists aloud, and less frequently when subjects were reading sentences. The effect of situational context on Japanese learners' production of retroflex ch wasn't found.Experiment 3: Free variation was observered in the Japanese learners' production of retroflex zh ch sh and explained in the light of development stages as those put forward in Gatbonton's diffusion model.From the results of this study, the author argued the phonetic variability was systematic, meanwhile it was nonsystematic. The variability in the performance of retroflex zh ch sh by Japanese learners of Mandarian is complicated.