Vowel and tone identification of Mandarin Chinese: Comparison between native Chinese and Korean listeners

Abstract

Speech in tone languages requires listeners to identify not only phonemes but also tones. As non-tone language users, Korean-native speakers may have difficulty in identifying tones and vowels and processing both tonal and phonemic information at the same time, which are not presented in their mother tongue. The goal of the present study was to investigate the identification of Mandarin Chinese vowels and tones for both native Mandarin Chinese and native Korean speakers with medium and high Chinese proficiency. Results showed that for the identification of Mandarin vowel-plus-tone, vowel, and tone, there was no difference between Chinese- and Korean-native listeners with high Chinese proficiency, whereas Chinese listeners significantly outperformed Korean listeners with medium Chinese proficiency, particularly for tones 1, 3, and 4 and vowel /y/. For Korean listeners, there was no significant correlation between the onset age of Chinese learning and identification scores, while the identification performance significantly correlated with the length of Chinese learning. Moreover, for both Chinese and Korean listeners, identification scores of vowel-plus-tone, tone and vowel are comparable, suggesting that both groups may process dual cues (vowel and tone) as efficiently as individual cues (vowel or tone).