Bilabial Stop Production And Perception By L1,L2,L3 Speakers

Mandarin,English and Japanese have different stop patterns and voice onset time.VOT has been employed to be a significant cue to distinguish stop contrasts.The purpose of this study was to examine the perception and production of labial stops by Mandarin learners of English as an L2 and Japanese as an L3,and to gain an insight of the interaction among these three languages.Based on Flege's Speech Learning Model(1995)and the Merger Hypothesis(1987),this thesis addresses the research questions below:1)How does L2/L3 influence the speakers' bilabial stop production in L1? 2)How does L2/L3 influence the speakers' perception of the bilabial stop voicing contrasts in L1? 3)Have L1 Mandarin speakers of L2 English and L3 Japanese developed the same VOT pattern that has VOT compromise values for all languages or a separate one for each in producing and perceiving stops of the languages?The present study recruited 20 Mandarin learners of English as an L2 and Japanese as an L3: 10 L1 Mandarin,L2 English speakers(Group Bi),and 10 L1 Mandarin,L2 English and L3 Japanese speakers(Group Tri).Six monolingual speakers as the control group also took part in this research: 2 Mandarin monolinguals,2 English monolinguals,and 2 Japanese monolinguals.The participants' production of the labial stops in different languages was elicited by reading a list of target monosyllabic words.The speakers also took part in a series of identification tests in which listeners had to identify stimuli from a VOT continuum as either fortis or lenis stop in different languages.The results show that: 1)L3 may influence the L1 and L2 VOT patterns.Participants in Group Tri produced bilabial stops with significantly different VOT values from Group Bi in English stops and Mandarin lenis stops.2)The perception results did not show significant differences between Group Bi and Tri in English and Mandarin bilabial stops.Nevertheless,their perception results differed from those of the Mandarin and Japanese monolinguals,which may indicate a regressive transfer from L2 or L3.3)L2 speakers have two different VOT patterns in production but only one VOT pattern in their L1 and L2 perception.However,L3 speakers have different VOT patterns from both production and perception perspective.The present study isonly an attempt to compare the VOT patterns of L2 and L3 learners.Further study may consider examining other places of articulation or conducting a longitudinal study.