A Study On Production And Perception Of English Coda Nasals By Cantonese And Mandarin Speakers

One's native language(L1)interferes with the acquisition of a foreign language(FL)both in production and perception,not only as a result of differences in the segment inventories,but also by the different distributions of segments in the L1 and FL.There are a lot of studies on the comparison of inventories between two languages among the phonetic researches,and the production and perception of new sounds and similar sounds have been a topic among the phoneticians.However during the English teaching,we find that the Mandarin Chinese had difficulties in pronouncing the English bilabial coda nasal /m/ but no problem for the onset nasal /m/ at all.This phenomenon attracts our attention on the phonological distribution,reminding us that the effects of phonological distribution on production and perception of foreign language could not be ignored.This study starts from the productive problems of English coda nasals by the Chinese English learners,and further investigates the differences of nasal distributions among Mandarin Chinese,Cantonese and English.In Mandarin Chinese,only the English alveolar nasal and English velar nasal appear at the coda positions,but not the English bilabial nasal.In Cantonese,all the three English nasals occur at the coda positions.According to these distributive differences,we assume that the Cantonese who were learning English as a Foreign Language(EFL)have advantages in the production and perception of English coda nasals,compared to the Mandarin EFL learners.This study took Mandarin Chinese,Cantonese,American as the subjects.The experiments included a productive test and a perceptual test.In each of the test,there were 3 groups of participant,12 people per groups,and there were 36 participants totally in every test.In terms of materials,there were 9 English meaningful words,including 3 words containing the target coda nasals(Bam,Ban,Bang)and another 6 words that served as distractors.This result of the experiments reveal that,first,the Cantonese EFL learners could accurately produce and perceive the English nasal codas in 69.45% of the cases,while Mandarin Chinese EFL learners scored 61.58% and American English speakers 82.41%.Compared with the Mandarin participants,the Cantonese ones indeed have advantages in the production and perception of English coda nasals.Secondly,the English bilabial nasal final /m/ was accurately acquired for 71.3% by the subjects(American English speakers: 81.95%,Cantonese speakers: 75%,Mandarin speakers: 56.95%).It states that the Mandarin participants have difficulties in the production and perception of English bilabial coda nasal /m/ compared to the Cantonese participants,which is mainly due to the differences of segment distributions.Thirdly,there was a significant correlation between the production and perception of English coda nasals among the subjects.The current thesis tests linguistic theories that deal with the priority of the mother tongue and the phonological interference by means of experimental research.The production and perception of foreign language are not only influenced by the segment inventories but also the distributions.The interference caused by phonological distributions is important and could not be underestimated.At the same time,the thesis provides advice on second language teaching and acquisition,for example,to give special attention on the phonological distribution and to improve the quality of phonetic training.