Sentence examples for their native tone from inspiring English sources

The results showed that F0 patterns of beginning-level L2 English are systematically different from those of native English speakers, which can be transferred from their native tone language.

The result has shown that intonation patterns of beginning-level L2 English produced by Vietnamese speakers are systematically different from those of native English speakers, which can be transferred from their native tone language.

Mandarin and Cantonese (tone-language) speakers were asked to categorize Thai tones according to their own native tone categories, and Australian English (non-tone-language) speakers to categorize Thai tones into their native intonation categories for instance, question or statement.

Both the Mandarin and Cantonese groups categorized AO and AV Thai falling tones as their native level tones, and Thai rising tones as their native rising tones, although the Mandarin participants found it easier to categorize Thai level tones than did the Cantonese participants.

A full account of tone assimilation will likely need to incorporate considerations of phonetic, and even acoustic, similarity and overlap between nonnative and native tone categories.

The top (most frequent) responses and associated percentages for the Cantonese tone, Mandarin tone, and English intonation groups (and the Thai native tone group for comparison) are included in the Appendix, along with mean goodness ratings.

Overall, Mandarin participants appeared to find the category assimilation task easier than did Cantonese participants (in terms of having a higher number of categorizations; i.e., tones were heard as a single native tone category), particularly for Thai level tones.

Given that the perception of level tones in a foreign tone language may be directly (Qin & Mok 2011) or inversely (Chiao et al., 2011) affected by the number of level tones in the listener's native tone language, these nonnative tone groups could be expected to have very different cross-mapping relationships to Thai (three level tones, five in total).

We note that Mandarin participants had fewer native response categories (four vs. six) to choose from; given that the Cantonese tone space is more crowded, fine phonetic detail (e.g., the vocal quality/creak associated with the Cantonese low-falling [21] tone; Vance, 1977; Yu & Lam, 2011) may be more important for Cantonese perceivers when determining native tone category membership.

Alternatively, there is evidence that tones could be assimilated to specific intonation (prosodic) categories in nontone languages (So & Best 2008, 2011, 2014), although it is quite possible that native intonation categories might not have the same degree of influence as native tone categories (Hallé et al., 2004).

Again, this is interesting in the context of the slight rising nature of the Thai high (45) tone, and given the parallel tendency of the Mandarin and Cantonese groups to map the Thai high tone to a rising tone in their native inventories.