Prosodic challenges faced by English speakers reading Mandarin

Abstract

This study compares the prosodic characteristics of L2-Mandarin as spoken by L1-English speakers using L1-Mandarin utterances. The acoustic correlates examined include individual tonal realizations, interactions of tones in sequence, durational features and intensity envelopes. L2-Mandarin users realize the contour tones RISE and FALL with both rising and falling pitch, and produce the second tone of disyllabic words with more varied pitch. L2-users employ larger vowel durations, syllable durations and larger variation over vowel intervals in sequential pairs than L1-Mandarin users. Both user groups show similar intensity envelopes. Implications of this study include tailoring language training programs that counterbalance L1 influences.

Towards a Framework for the Design of Quantitative Experiments: Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility Research

“…The motivation for this work is our extensive use of statistics in our previous work including analyzing students' coursework practices [19], cross cultural differences [20], expectations [21], university preferences [22], motivation [23], language learning [24], cross language effects [25], emotions [26], and prosody [27]. The authors have also applied statistics explicitly in computer science to achieve engineering solutions.…”

Hostage of the Software: Experiences in Teaching Inferential Statistics to Undergraduate Human-Computer Interaction Students and a Survey of the Literature

“…However, the more practical sides of statistics such as inferential statistics that concerns itself with hypothesis testing are also increasingly relevant. Traditionally, inferential statistics has been more visible in the curriculum of other fields of study such as agriculture, where one compares crops, medicine, and health sciences [11], where one may compare the effects of treatment, psychology, education [12,13], educational policy [14,15], language learning [16,17], linguistics [18,19,20], and social science [21], to name a few.…”

Statistics-IDE: Supporting the Design of Empirical Experiments for Non-experts During Early Stages of Research Projects

“…For example, the authors of this article have employed statistical methods for a wide range of problems, including the study of students' coursework practices [9], cross cultural comparisons of students [10], choice of university life [11], university preferences [12], and specific study tool preferences [13]. Other examples include the quantitative study of phonetic perceptions [14], speakers' ability to communicate emotions in a second language [15], and pronunciation traits of language learners [16].…”