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English Language Teaching; Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 ISSN 1916-4742 E-ISSN 1916-4750 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education English and Thai Speakers’ Perception of Mandarin Tones Ying Li1 1 School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China Correspondence: Ying Li, School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China. E-mail: [email protected] Received: November 1, 2015 Accepted: December 9, 2015 Online Published: December 10, 2015 doi:10.5539/elt.v9n1p122 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n1p122 Abstract Language learners’ language experience is predicted to display a significant effect on their accurate perception of foreign language sounds (Flege, 1995). At the superasegmental level, there is still a debate regarding whether tone language speakers are better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers (i.e Lee et al., 1996; Burnham & Brooker, 2002). The current study aimed to shed some light on this issue. Specifically, 24 adult Thai and 21 adult English speakers, who had no knowledge on Mandarin prior to participation in the study, were recruited. The participants’ accuracy in the perception of 4 Mandarin tones (T1, T2, T3, T4) was individually examined using an identification test. 288 stimuli of /ti/, /ta/, /tu/, /tʂhi/, /tʂha/, and /tʂhu/ produced in 4 Mandarin tones were prepared. The stimuli were embedded in a carrier sentence, and were produced by a female and a male native Mandarin speaker. According to the results, (1) none of the participants achieved 100% accuracy in any of the perception tests; (2) in the perception of Mandarin T1 and T4, the Thai speakers significantly outperformed the English speakers; (3) the Thai speakers and the English speakers displayed very similar degrees of difficulty in the perception of Mandarin T2 and T3; (4) the Thai participants’ most serious confusion was in the discrimination of T2-T3, whereas the English participants showed significant confusion in the identification of T1-T2 and T2-T3. The findings suggest that tone language speakers may benefit more from their L1 in the perception of foreign lexical tones than did the non-tone language speakers. However, the degree of the beneficial effect identified was limited. Keywords: lexical tone, tone sensitivity, foreign language, L1 1. Introduction Language experience is frequently viewed as a significant factor that affects language learners’ perception of non-native speech sounds (So & Best, 2010). Many previous studies have intensively investigated native language (L1) influences on language learners’ perception of a non-native sounds at the segmental level (e.g. Best, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007; Ying, 2014), whereas there is a paucity of empirical evidence available at the superasegmental level (i.e. stress pattern, quantity contrasts). The present study, therefore, investigated the influence of listeners’ L1 on their perception of L2 lexical tones. Particularly, it examined whether tone language speakers are more likely to have an accurate perception of non-native lexical tones than non-tone language speakers. If this proved to be the case, the intention was also to establish to what extent tone language speakers could outperform the non-tone language speakers. Some reports on non-native tone perception have suggested that tone language speakers are benefited from their L1 in the perception of non-native lexical tones more than non-tone language speakers. For instance, Lee et al. (1996) reported that native Cantonese speakers perceived Mandarin tones better than native English speakers did. Similarly, in a perception training study, Wayland and Guion (2004) found that native Mandarin Chinese listeners had better discrimination of Thai tones than native English listeners in their pre-test and post-test results. Moreover, native English speakers were revealed to focus on pitch height when perceiving tones, whereas tone-language speakers (i.e., Cantonese and Mandarin speakers) were revealed to focus on both pitch height and pitch direction in the perception of lexical tones (Gandour, 1983, 1984). In general, these findings may have suggested that listeners whose L1 is a tone language are better able to have accurate perception of non-native lexical tones than those whose L1 is a non-tone language. Nonetheless, this point of view might be compromised if we take a further look at the study conducted by Lee et al. (1996), which reported that the Cantonese subjects had an extensive exposure to Mandarin, which may have 122 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 also beneffited their perrception of Maandarin tones.. In comparisoon, the Englissh subjects weere not exposeed to Mandarin to the same exxtent as the CCantonese. Morreover, it has bbeen revealed that listeners who are musiically trained geenerally showeed a better perrformance on non-native lexical tone perrception than listeners withoout a musical trraining backgrround (Alexannder, Wong, && Bradlow, 20005; Burnhamm & Brooker, 2002; Gottfrieed & Riester, 20000). Even in Gandour’s (1983) study, Chinese speakeers were foundd to place morre emphasis onn the dimensionn of pitch levell than Thai speeakers did, desspite the fact tthat both Chinnese and Thai aare tone languages. Therefore,, these studies suggest that itt may be not aalways the casee that tone lannguage speakerrs are better abble to perceive nnon-native lexiccal tones than non-tone langguage speakers. To furtherr investigate this issue, thhe present stuudy examined tone and noon-tone speakkers’ perceptioon of non-nativee lexical tones.. Native Thai aand native Engglish speakers’ accuracy in tthe perception of Mandarin ttones was testedd. Mandarin, EEnglish and Thai have theirr unique featuures at phonetiic and phonoloogical levels. Both Mandarin and Thai are lexical tone lannguages, in whhich lexical tonnes signal diffeerent lexical mmeanings (Yip, 2002, p. 2; Tingssabadh & Deeeprasert, 1997)). Moreover, aas shown in Fiigure 1 and Figure 2 below, their tone sysstems are differeent from each other in terms of variancess in fundamenntal frequencies (F0). Mandaarin has four ttones (Bauer & Benedict, 19997; Duanmu, 22004; Hashimooto, 1972). Thhey are high llevel (Tone 1; hereafter T1), mid rising (Tonne 2; hereafterr T2), falling rising (Tone 3; hereafter T3),, and high falliing (Tone 4; heereafter T4) (CChao, 1930). Thaai (Note 1), hhowever, has ffive tones—miid, low, fallingg, high, and riising (Tingsabbadh & Deepraasert, 1997). It wwas reported thhat the high tonne in Thai is laacking in Manndarin. The resst of the 4 Thaii tones are found to have their counterparts iin the Mandariin tone systemm. Specifically:: mid ≈ T1; loww ≈ T3; fallingg ≈ T4; rising≈ T2 (Kwanreann, 2001). Nevvertheless, it wwas revealed tthat Mandarinn T2 and T3 hhave shorter dduration than their counterparrts—low and rrising tones in Thai (Kwanreaan, 2001). In comparrison, English is a non-tone language, or aa “stress-accennt language” (BBeckman, 1986), thus it doees not depend onn lexical tones in the differenntiation of lexiccal meanings. At the word leevel, its use off distinctive pittch is quite restrricted. Stressedd syllables typpically differ ffrrom unstressed ones in vowwel quality andd length, which are more conssistent and salient than F0 vaariances (Beckkman, 1986; Cuutler & Otake,, 1999; Fox, 2000; Gussenhooven, 2004; So && Best, 2010). Figure 1. Naturally spokeen examples off the pitch sammples of the Maandarin tone syystems (assessed from So & Bestt 2010) 123 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Figure 2. Naturally spokeen examples off the pitch sammples of the Maandarin tone syystems (assessed from So & Bestt 2010) In the pressent study, if tthe Thai particcipants outperfform the English ones in thee perception oof Mandarin leexical tones, it wwill imply that L1 experiencce, specificallyy the participannts’ L1 phonological knowleedge, underliees the perceptionn of non-nativee lexical tones. 2. Methoddology 2.1 Particiipant Selectionn The criteriia for the selecction of the paarticipants were that they hadd no knowledgge of Mandarinn tones prior to the study. Theerefore, 24 natiive Thai particcipants from Bangkok (12 femmale, 12 male; age range: 211-29) and 21 nnative English paarticipants fromm London andd York (11 femmale, 10 male; age range: 199-30) were paiid to join the sstudy. All the paarticipants werre born and raised in their hhome countriess (Thailand annd U.K.). Nonne of them hadd any knowledgee on Mandarinn, or any oppoortunity to conntact with Maandarin speakeers, nor had thhey been musiically trained priior to or duringg the time of thhe study. A femmale (age=21)) and a male (aage=23) nativee Mandarin speeaker were recruuited to producce the stimuli used in the perception test.. They were born and raisedd in Beijing CChina, and were iin the process oof completing her Bachelor’s degree at a UUniversity in BBeijing. 2.2 Stimuli The stimuli used in the identification test were the same as those adopted by GGottfried and SSuiter, 1997 annd So and Best ((2010). They were Mandariin syllables, ddi, da, du, chi, cha, and chuu. In IPA (Inteernational Phoonetic Alphabet),, the syllabless are pronouncced as /ti/, /taa/, /tu/, /tʂhi/, /tʂha/, and /ttʂhu/). Anotheer 3 syllables were employed in the familiaarization test: /ki/, /ka/, /kuu/. The syllables were chossen because (1) the three ‘ppoint vowels’ (//i, a, u/) weigght differentlyy from each oother regardinng their vowell space; (2) tthe consonants are unaspirated stops, thus could avoid aspiration; (3) these segmeents are availlable in both Thai and Engglish, therefore tthe participantss were expecteed to restrict thheir focuses onnly on tones (SSo & Best 20100). The targett words were embedded in the middle pposition of a ccarrier sentencce in Chinesee [把X标出来来 (in English: MMark the X; in IPA: [pa] X [ttu] [tsʰeu][laɪ])). The target wwords were putt in between thhe vowel /a/ annd the stop /t/ to avoid aspiratioon. Each stimuulus sentence wwas spoken twwice by a nativve male Mandaarin speaker annd by a native feemale Mandariin speaker. Thee recordings wwere carried ouut in a sound-pproofed booth with a high quuality recorder (RRoland 03), annd were savedd as audio souund files in waav format on aa PC laptop coomputer (MacBBook Air). As wwas the case inn the tests connducted by So and Best (20110), all the targget words werre excised fromm the stimulus sentence framee, and normalizzed to mean ppeak intensity with the Praatt program (Booersma & Weenink, 2015). In tthe identificatiion test, there were 96 stimuulus sentences in total (6 sylllables × 4 tonnes × 2 samplees per tone × 2 sppeakers). Eachh sentence wass repeated 3 timmes and randoomized in the iidentification ttest, thus yielding a total numbber of 288 tokkens. In the fammiliarization taask, there werre 24 tokens inn total (3 syllaables × 4 tones × 2 speakers). All the stimulus sentences inn the identificaation test and ffamiliarizationn task were ranndomized. 124 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Before doiing the test, thhe intelligibilitty of the tones of the stimulii was evaluateed by 3 native mandarin speaakers (see Guionn, Flege, & Akahane-Yamadda, 2000; Wanng, Spence, Joongman, & Serreno, 1999). TThese compriseed of Chinese sstudents from Chiang Rai Rajabhat Uniiversity (2 femmale and 1 mmale; mean aage=20.42). The 3 participantts were asked to do a four-aalternative forcced-choice taskk with the stimmuli of the ideentification test and the familiaarization task. AAs a result, alll of the stimulii were correctly identified byy each of the 3 participants. 2.3 Proceddure A familiarization task was carried out prior to the identification tesst. This was deesigned to enaable the particippants to learn thhe tone labels (Tone 1: －, TTone 2: ／, TTone 3: ∨, Toone 4: ﹨) of tthe 4 Mandariin tones in thee task (see So & Best, 2010). Inn a quiet roomm, each particippant was askedd to sit in frontt of a desktop ccomputer, and wear a headphoone connected to the compuuter. The 24 tookens mentioneed above in seection 2.3 werre employed aas the stimuli. Thhe stimuli weere displayed on the compuuter screen, annd were linkeed to the pronnunciation. Onnce a stimulus tooken was clickked on, its auddio pronunciattion was played through the headphone the participants were wearing, wwith the tone label and namme displayed ssimultaneouslyy on the screeen. It was a seelf-paced task. The participantts were given 5 minutes to do the task. TThey were askked to listen too each of the speech samples as many timees as they couldd within the alllotted time. After the ffamiliarizationn task was commpleted, the paarticipants werre asked to doo a four-alternaative forced-chhoice identificatiion task. An aanswer sheet ((see Appendixx) was handedd out to individual participannts, on which they were askedd to select the right tone theyy heard by circcling the answer, even if gueessing. In the bbracket next to each item, they were asked too show their ddegree of conffiidence regardiing the correcttness of their aanswers by givven a score fromm 0 to 4 (0 = completely gguessing; 4 = absolutely surre about the aanswer) (Best et al., 1998). The inter-stimuulus interval (IISI) was 6 secconds. No feeddback was givven during the test. The inveestigator contrrolled the displayy of the recorddings from a ceentral computeer in the room. After the idenntification test wwas completedd, the investigatoor collected alll the participannts’ answer sheeets, and enterred the individdual participantts’ answers intto the SPSS proggram for the statistical analyssis. 3. Results 3.1 Generaal Results Figure 3. Thaai and English pparticipants’ accuracy in the perception off the 4 Mandariin Tones in the iddentification teest 125 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Figure 4. Thaai and English pparticipants’ accuracy in the perception off the 4 Mandariin Tones in the iddentification teest As show iin Figure 3, thhe overall resuults indicate thhat none of thhe participants achieved 1000% accuracy inn the identificatiion test. The TThai participannts’ results shoowed a higherr degree of acccuracy in the pperception of the 4 tones thann the English pparticipants. Inn particular, thhe Thai particippants’ degree of accuracy wwas much highher in the percepption of T1 andd T4 than Engliish participantts. The subjeccts’ ‘confidencce’ score in the identificationn of the 4 tones showed thaat some of ansswers were gueessed (see Figurre 3.2). Therefore, there miight be a channce of risks aattached to thee identificatioon test results. The participantts’ responses, therefore, werre further calcuulated into A--prime scores (A′) (Snodgrasss, Levy-Berger, & Haydon, 1985; also see SSo & Best, 2010). As displayyed in Table 1and Figure 5 bbelow, none off the participannts’ A′ score was above 0.9. Somme of them shhowed a near-bby-chance result (around 0.5)), which was consistent with their ‘confidencce’ scores. Mooreover, as wass the case withh the scores shhown in Figurre 4 above, thee Thai particippants’ mean A′ sscore was signnificantly highher than that of the Englissh participantss in the perceeption of T1 ((Thai speakers: 00.89 vs. Englissh speakers: 0.66) and T4 (TThai speakers: 0.71 vs. Engliish speakers: 00.68) (p<0.05). The differencess between theiir accuracies inn the identificcation of T2 (TThai speakers: 0.66 vs. Engllish speakers: 0.63) and T3 ((Thai speakerrs: 0.87 vs. English speaakers: 0.69), however, weere revealed to be statistiically non-signifficant (p>0.05)). Table 1. DDescriptive Stattistics of the paarticipants’ ressults in the idenntification testt Tone Participaant groups Range Minimum Maximumm Mean Std. Error English pparticipants 0.39 0.51 0.80 0.66 0.03 T1 Thai parrticipnats 0.18 0.78 0.96 0.89 0.01 English pparticipants 0.23 0.55 0.78 0.68 0.02 T2 Thai parrticipnats 0.34 0.58 0.92 0.71 0.02 English pparticipants 0.38 0.55 0.73 0.63 0.04 T3 Thai parrticipnats 0.20 0.58 0.78 0.66 0.03 English pparticipants 0.28 0.51 0.79 0.69 0.02 T4 Thai parrticipnats 0.17 0.78 0.95 0.87 0.01 126 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Figure 5. The Thai and EEnglish particiipants’ A-primme scores in thee identificationn test To further analyze the paarticipants’ sennsitivity to thee 4 Mandarin ttones, their A′scores were cooded into the SSPSS program aand were analyyzed with a twwo-way ANOVAA. The group ddifference (Thaai group and EEnglish group)) was coded as aa between-subjects factor. Tonal difference(T1, T2, T3, aand T4) was cooded as the within-subjects ffactor. It turned oout that tonal difference (F (3, 60)=37.99, p<0.001) and the interactiion between toonal differencee and group difffference (F(3, 129)=43.07, p<0.001) were all found to have dispplayed significcant effect onn the participantts’ A′ scores ((Mauchly’s Teest of Sphericiity=0.518). Mooreover, as a between-subjeects factor, geender difference was found neeither to be non-significant ffor the Thai paarticipants (F((1, 19)=0.06, pp=0.81) nor foor the English paarticipants’ (F((1, 22)=0.37, pp=0.55) A′ scorres. An additioonal Pairwisee Comparisons test indicatted that the EEnglish particiipants’ mean differences inn the identificatiion of the 4 toones were statiistically insignnificant (p>0.005). In contrasst, however, thhe Thai particippants were reveaaled to be morre likely to perrceive Mandariin T1 and T4 tthan T2 and T3. The mean ddifferences betwween their A′ scoores in the identification of TT1 vs. T4 and T2 vs. T3 werre statistically insignificant ((p>0.05) (see TTable 2 below). Table 2. Paairwise compaarisons testing results TThai participannts English paarticipants (I) Tone (J) Tone MMean Differencce (I-J) Stdd. Error Sig. Mean Difffeerence (I-J) Std. Error Sig. T2 00.18 0.022 0.000 -0.02 0.02 0.23 T1 T3 00.23 0.022 0.000 0.03 0.02 0.10 T4 00.02 0.022 0.21 -0.03 0.02 0.19 T1 -00.18 0.022 0.000 0.02 0.02 0.23 T2 T3 00.05 0.033 0.077 0.05 0.02 0.00 T4 -00.16 0.022 0.000 0.00 0.02 0.86 T1 -00.23 0.022 0.000 -0.03 0.02 0.10 T3 T2 -00.05 0.033 0.077 -0.05 0.02 0.00 T4 -00.21 0.01 0.000 -0.05 0.02 0.02 T1 -00.02 0.022 0.21 0.03 0.02 0.19 T4 T2 00.16 0.022 0.000 0.00 0.02 0.86 T3 00.21 0.01 0.000 0.05 0.02 0.02 127 www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 3.2 Results of Tonal Confusions The above results indicated the participants’ tone sensitivity. Given that language listeners’ L1 phonology system may display influence on their perception of foreign tones (So & Best 2010; Wayland & Guion, 2004; Lee et al., 1996), it would be necessary to investigate the participants’ confusions on each tone. However, their answers (correct and incorrect ones) with a confidence score of 0 were excluded, because these responses were given by ‘totally guessing’. Table 3. Thai participants’ confusion matrices in the identification test Responses (%) target T1 T2 T3 T4 Total T1 82.01% 6.40% 5.94% 5.65% 100.00% T2 5.23% 67.25% 24.71% 2.81% 100.00% T3 3.20% 29.03% 60.98% 6.79% 100.00% T4 4.55% 6.77% 4.21% 84.47% 100.00% Table 3.4 English participants’ confusion matrices in the identification test Responses (%) target T1 T2 T3 T4 Total T1 60.29% 21.45% 9.97% 8.29% 100.00% T2 18.50% 64.08% 15.33% 2.09% 100.00% T3 9.34% 21.90% 59.01% 9.75% 100.00% T4 8.83% 9.44% 9.53% 72.20% 100.00% As show in Table 2 and Table 3 above, the Thai participants did not show serious confusion between T1 and the other 3 tones, as their confusions (incorrect responses) between T1 and T2, T1 and T3, T1 and T4 all counted around 6%. A similar phenomenon was found to occur between T4 and T1, T4 and T3. However, they displayed a comparatively much higher degree of confusion in the differentiation of T2-T3, as they incorrectly identified target T2 as T3 (incorrect response: 24.71%), and T3 as T2 (incorrect response: 29.03%). For the English speakers, they incorrectly identified target T1 as T2 with a percentage of 21.45%, and target T2 as T1 with a percentage of 18.50%. Moreover, the English participants also incorrectly identified target T2 as T3 and target T3 as T2 with a percentage of 15.33% and 21.90% respectively. The rest of the incorrect responses were all below 10%. Generally, therefore, the English participants showed significant confusions in the identification between T1 and T2 as well as between T2 and T3. 4. Discussion The present study examined whether tone language speakers could be better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers. The findings of the study provided somewhat complicated results. First of all, the overall results showed that the Thai participants outperformed the English participants in the perception of the 4 tones (see Figure 3 and Table 4). Therefore, it might be tempting to assume that tonal language speakers benefit more from their L1 experience in the perception of foreign lexical tones than do non-tonal language speakers. This finding is consistent with those presented by Lee et al. (1996) and Wayland and Guion (2004). However, the participant group showing better performance (Cantonese speakers) in Lee et al. (1996) had extensive exposure to Mandarin, while the Thai participants of the present study did not. In other words, compared to Lee et al. (1996), the Thai participants’ perception performance in the present study may be better able to provide supporting evidence for the influence of L1 on the perception of foreign lexical tones. Regarding the Wayland and Guion’s (2004) study, although the tonal language speakers (Chinese) outperformed the non-tone language speakers (English) in the perception of Thai tones both before and after being trained, they only tested the speakers’ identification of 2 Thai tones (mid tone vs. low tone). The second finding was that the Thai participants significantly outperformed the English participants in the 128 www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 identification of T1 and T4. Unexpectedly, n the perception of T2 and T3, the English participants’ A’ scores were only slightly lower than that of the Thai participants. Although the Thai participants’ good performance in the perception of T1 and T4 can be explained by the similarities between Mandarin and Thai tones, their low accuracy in the identification of T2 and T3 can hardly be attributed to this factor. However, this latter result could be explained by the fact that Mandarin T2 and T3 show shorter duration than their counterparts in Thai tones (Kwanrean, 2001). Moreover, So and Best (2010) suggests that T2-T3, T1-T2, T1-T4 are more confusable in terms of identification than other pairs, because they share some similar phonetic features. Another significant finding was that the two groups of participants showed different confusion patterns among the 4 Mandarin tones. Thai participants’ most significant confusion levels occurred in the identification between T2 and T3. The English participants, however, displayed serious confusions in T1-T2 and T2-T3. As discussed above, due to phonetic similarities, the 2 pairs of tones (T1-T2, T2-T3) are generally suggested to be more difficult to identify than the other tone pairs (So & Best, 2010). Moreover, the Thai participants’ confusion may be caused by the durational difference between T2, T3 and their counterparts in the Thai language. In addition, none of the participants achieved 100% accuracy in the identification test. In other words, even if the Thai participants were benefited by their L1, the degree of the benefit was limited. One of the limitations of the present study was that it lacked phonetic analysis, thus no evidence showed whether the English and Thai participants relied on the same acoustic cues in the identification test. As reported by Gandour (1983, 1984), English speakers identify lexical tones through the perception of pitch height, whereas Cantonese and Mandarin speakers rely on both pitch height and pitch direction. Therefore, it may be able to argue that in the present study, the acoustic cue(s) that the Thai participants rely on were different from those employed by the English participants. 5. Conclusion The present study investigated the influence of L1 influence on the perception of foreign lexical tones. The Thai and English participants’ perception of Mandarin tones was compared. The findings indicated the Thai participants’ overall accuracy of perception was higher than the English speakers. The Thai participants’ most serious confusion was in the identification between T2 and T3. The English participants, on the other hand, displayed significant difficulty in the identification of tone pairs T1-T2 and T2-T3. The findings suggested that L1 does affect language listeners’ identification of foreign lexical tones. Specifically, tone language speakers might be better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers. The unexpected finding of the study, which may shed some light on the topic of lexical tone perception, was that the English and Thai speakers displayed similar accuracy in the perception of Mandarin T2 and T3. In other words, the beneficial effect of tone language as an L1 is limited for the listeners’ perception of foreign Lexical tones. 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 Gandour, J. T. (1983). Tone perception in Far Eastern languages. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 149-175. Gandour, J. T. (1984). Tone dissimilarity judgments by Chinese listeners. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 12, 235-261. Gottfried, T. L., & Suiter, T. L. (1997). Effect of linguistic experience on the identification of Mandarin Chinese vowels and tones. Journal of Phonetics, 25(2), 207-231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1997.0042 Guessenhoven, C. (2004). The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511616983 Guion, S. G., Flege, J. E., Akahane-Yamada, R., & Pruitt, J. C. (2000). An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: The case of Japanese adults’ perception of English consonants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107(5), 2711-2724. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.428657 Hashimoto, A. O.-K. Y. (1972). Phonology of Cantonese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kwanrean, T. (2001). The Comparison and Contrast of Mandarin and Thai Tones. Thesis for Master’s degree at Yunnan Normal University. Lee, Y.-S., Vakoch, D. A., & Wurm, L. H. (1996). Tone perception in Cantonese and Mandarin: A cross-linguistic comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25(5), 527-542. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01758181 Snodgrass, J. G., Levy-Berger, G., & Haydon, M. (1985). Human Experimental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. So, C. K., & Best, C. K. (2010). Cross-language perception of non-native tonal contrasts: effects of native phonological and phonetic influences. Language and Speech, 53(2), 273-293. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830909357156 Tingsabadh, K., & Deeprasert, D. (1997). Tones in standard Thai connected speech. Southeast Asian Linguistic Studies in Honour of Vichin Panupong, 297-307. Thepboriruk, K. (2009). Bangkok Thai tones revisited. Journal of The Southeast Asian Linguistis Society, 3, 86-105. Wang, Y., Spence, M. M., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. A. (1999). Training American listeners to perceive Mandarin tones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106(6), 3649-3658. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.428217 Wayland, R. P., & Guion, S. G. (2004). Training English and Chinese listeners to perceive Thai tones: A preliminary report. Language Learning, 54(4), 681-712. 
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2004.00283.x Ying, L. (2014). Coarticulation effect on L1-Mandarin speakers’ perception of English /s/-/z/. Opening New Lines of Communications in Applied Linguistics. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistic, 269-283. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0398-8 Yip, M. (2002). Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164559 Note 1. In the present paper, Thai refers to Bangkok Thai. 130 www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 Appendix Stimulus sentences used in the identification test 1. 把di标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T1) 2. 把di标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T2) 3. 把di标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T3) 4. 把di标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T4) 5. 把da标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T1) 6. 把da标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T2) 7. 把da标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T3) 8. 把da标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T4) 9. 把du标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T1) 10. 把du标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T2) 11. 把du标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T3) 12. 把du标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T4) 13. 把chi标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the chi) (T1) 14. 把chi标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the chi) (T2) 15. 把chi标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the chi) (T3) 16. 把chi标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the chi (T4) 17. 把cha标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the cha) (T1) 18. 把cha标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the cha) (T2) 19. 把cha标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the cha) (T3) 20. 把cha标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the cha (T4) 21. 把chu标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the chu) (T1) 22. 把chi标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the chu) (T2) 23. 把chu标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the chu) (T3) 24. 把chu标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the chu (T4) Stimulus sentences used in the familiarization task: 1. 把ki标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 2. 把ki标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 3. 把ki标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 4. 把ki标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 5. 把ka标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 6. 把ka标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 7. 把ka标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 8. 把ka标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 9. 把ku标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 10. 把ku标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 11. 把ku标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 12. 把ku标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 131

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English Language Teaching; Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 ISSN 1916-4742 E-ISSN 1916-4750 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education English and Thai Speakers’ Perception of Mandarin Tones Ying Li1 1 School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China Correspondence: Ying Li, School of Foreign Languages, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China. E-mail: [email protected] Received: November 1, 2015 Accepted: December 9, 2015 Online Published: December 10, 2015 doi:10.5539/elt.v9n1p122 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/elt.v9n1p122 Abstract Language learners’ language experience is predicted to display a significant effect on their accurate perception of foreign language sounds (Flege, 1995). At the superasegmental level, there is still a debate regarding whether tone language speakers are better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers (i.e Lee et al., 1996; Burnham & Brooker, 2002). The current study aimed to shed some light on this issue. Specifically, 24 adult Thai and 21 adult English speakers, who had no knowledge on Mandarin prior to participation in the study, were recruited. The participants’ accuracy in the perception of 4 Mandarin tones (T1, T2, T3, T4) was individually examined using an identification test. 288 stimuli of /ti/, /ta/, /tu/, /tʂhi/, /tʂha/, and /tʂhu/ produced in 4 Mandarin tones were prepared. The stimuli were embedded in a carrier sentence, and were produced by a female and a male native Mandarin speaker. According to the results, (1) none of the participants achieved 100% accuracy in any of the perception tests; (2) in the perception of Mandarin T1 and T4, the Thai speakers significantly outperformed the English speakers; (3) the Thai speakers and the English speakers displayed very similar degrees of difficulty in the perception of Mandarin T2 and T3; (4) the Thai participants’ most serious confusion was in the discrimination of T2-T3, whereas the English participants showed significant confusion in the identification of T1-T2 and T2-T3. The findings suggest that tone language speakers may benefit more from their L1 in the perception of foreign lexical tones than did the non-tone language speakers. However, the degree of the beneficial effect identified was limited. Keywords: lexical tone, tone sensitivity, foreign language, L1 1. Introduction Language experience is frequently viewed as a significant factor that affects language learners’ perception of non-native speech sounds (So & Best, 2010). Many previous studies have intensively investigated native language (L1) influences on language learners’ perception of a non-native sounds at the segmental level (e.g. Best, 1995; Best & Tyler, 2007; Ying, 2014), whereas there is a paucity of empirical evidence available at the superasegmental level (i.e. stress pattern, quantity contrasts). The present study, therefore, investigated the influence of listeners’ L1 on their perception of L2 lexical tones. Particularly, it examined whether tone language speakers are more likely to have an accurate perception of non-native lexical tones than non-tone language speakers. If this proved to be the case, the intention was also to establish to what extent tone language speakers could outperform the non-tone language speakers. Some reports on non-native tone perception have suggested that tone language speakers are benefited from their L1 in the perception of non-native lexical tones more than non-tone language speakers. For instance, Lee et al. (1996) reported that native Cantonese speakers perceived Mandarin tones better than native English speakers did. Similarly, in a perception training study, Wayland and Guion (2004) found that native Mandarin Chinese listeners had better discrimination of Thai tones than native English listeners in their pre-test and post-test results. Moreover, native English speakers were revealed to focus on pitch height when perceiving tones, whereas tone-language speakers (i.e., Cantonese and Mandarin speakers) were revealed to focus on both pitch height and pitch direction in the perception of lexical tones (Gandour, 1983, 1984). In general, these findings may have suggested that listeners whose L1 is a tone language are better able to have accurate perception of non-native lexical tones than those whose L1 is a non-tone language. Nonetheless, this point of view might be compromised if we take a further look at the study conducted by Lee et al. (1996), which reported that the Cantonese subjects had an extensive exposure to Mandarin, which may have 122 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 also beneffited their perrception of Maandarin tones.. In comparisoon, the Englissh subjects weere not exposeed to Mandarin to the same exxtent as the CCantonese. Morreover, it has bbeen revealed that listeners who are musiically trained geenerally showeed a better perrformance on non-native lexical tone perrception than listeners withoout a musical trraining backgrround (Alexannder, Wong, && Bradlow, 20005; Burnhamm & Brooker, 2002; Gottfrieed & Riester, 20000). Even in Gandour’s (1983) study, Chinese speakeers were foundd to place morre emphasis onn the dimensionn of pitch levell than Thai speeakers did, desspite the fact tthat both Chinnese and Thai aare tone languages. Therefore,, these studies suggest that itt may be not aalways the casee that tone lannguage speakerrs are better abble to perceive nnon-native lexiccal tones than non-tone langguage speakers. To furtherr investigate this issue, thhe present stuudy examined tone and noon-tone speakkers’ perceptioon of non-nativee lexical tones.. Native Thai aand native Engglish speakers’ accuracy in tthe perception of Mandarin ttones was testedd. Mandarin, EEnglish and Thai have theirr unique featuures at phonetiic and phonoloogical levels. Both Mandarin and Thai are lexical tone lannguages, in whhich lexical tonnes signal diffeerent lexical mmeanings (Yip, 2002, p. 2; Tingssabadh & Deeeprasert, 1997)). Moreover, aas shown in Fiigure 1 and Figure 2 below, their tone sysstems are differeent from each other in terms of variancess in fundamenntal frequencies (F0). Mandaarin has four ttones (Bauer & Benedict, 19997; Duanmu, 22004; Hashimooto, 1972). Thhey are high llevel (Tone 1; hereafter T1), mid rising (Tonne 2; hereafterr T2), falling rising (Tone 3; hereafter T3),, and high falliing (Tone 4; heereafter T4) (CChao, 1930). Thaai (Note 1), hhowever, has ffive tones—miid, low, fallingg, high, and riising (Tingsabbadh & Deepraasert, 1997). It wwas reported thhat the high tonne in Thai is laacking in Manndarin. The resst of the 4 Thaii tones are found to have their counterparts iin the Mandariin tone systemm. Specifically:: mid ≈ T1; loww ≈ T3; fallingg ≈ T4; rising≈ T2 (Kwanreann, 2001). Nevvertheless, it wwas revealed tthat Mandarinn T2 and T3 hhave shorter dduration than their counterparrts—low and rrising tones in Thai (Kwanreaan, 2001). In comparrison, English is a non-tone language, or aa “stress-accennt language” (BBeckman, 1986), thus it doees not depend onn lexical tones in the differenntiation of lexiccal meanings. At the word leevel, its use off distinctive pittch is quite restrricted. Stressedd syllables typpically differ ffrrom unstressed ones in vowwel quality andd length, which are more conssistent and salient than F0 vaariances (Beckkman, 1986; Cuutler & Otake,, 1999; Fox, 2000; Gussenhooven, 2004; So && Best, 2010). Figure 1. Naturally spokeen examples off the pitch sammples of the Maandarin tone syystems (assessed from So & Bestt 2010) 123 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Figure 2. Naturally spokeen examples off the pitch sammples of the Maandarin tone syystems (assessed from So & Bestt 2010) In the pressent study, if tthe Thai particcipants outperfform the English ones in thee perception oof Mandarin leexical tones, it wwill imply that L1 experiencce, specificallyy the participannts’ L1 phonological knowleedge, underliees the perceptionn of non-nativee lexical tones. 2. Methoddology 2.1 Particiipant Selectionn The criteriia for the selecction of the paarticipants were that they hadd no knowledgge of Mandarinn tones prior to the study. Theerefore, 24 natiive Thai particcipants from Bangkok (12 femmale, 12 male; age range: 211-29) and 21 nnative English paarticipants fromm London andd York (11 femmale, 10 male; age range: 199-30) were paiid to join the sstudy. All the paarticipants werre born and raised in their hhome countriess (Thailand annd U.K.). Nonne of them hadd any knowledgee on Mandarinn, or any oppoortunity to conntact with Maandarin speakeers, nor had thhey been musiically trained priior to or duringg the time of thhe study. A femmale (age=21)) and a male (aage=23) nativee Mandarin speeaker were recruuited to producce the stimuli used in the perception test.. They were born and raisedd in Beijing CChina, and were iin the process oof completing her Bachelor’s degree at a UUniversity in BBeijing. 2.2 Stimuli The stimuli used in the identification test were the same as those adopted by GGottfried and SSuiter, 1997 annd So and Best ((2010). They were Mandariin syllables, ddi, da, du, chi, cha, and chuu. In IPA (Inteernational Phoonetic Alphabet),, the syllabless are pronouncced as /ti/, /taa/, /tu/, /tʂhi/, /tʂha/, and /ttʂhu/). Anotheer 3 syllables were employed in the familiaarization test: /ki/, /ka/, /kuu/. The syllables were chossen because (1) the three ‘ppoint vowels’ (//i, a, u/) weigght differentlyy from each oother regardinng their vowell space; (2) tthe consonants are unaspirated stops, thus could avoid aspiration; (3) these segmeents are availlable in both Thai and Engglish, therefore tthe participantss were expecteed to restrict thheir focuses onnly on tones (SSo & Best 20100). The targett words were embedded in the middle pposition of a ccarrier sentencce in Chinesee [把X标出来来 (in English: MMark the X; in IPA: [pa] X [ttu] [tsʰeu][laɪ])). The target wwords were putt in between thhe vowel /a/ annd the stop /t/ to avoid aspiratioon. Each stimuulus sentence wwas spoken twwice by a nativve male Mandaarin speaker annd by a native feemale Mandariin speaker. Thee recordings wwere carried ouut in a sound-pproofed booth with a high quuality recorder (RRoland 03), annd were savedd as audio souund files in waav format on aa PC laptop coomputer (MacBBook Air). As wwas the case inn the tests connducted by So and Best (20110), all the targget words werre excised fromm the stimulus sentence framee, and normalizzed to mean ppeak intensity with the Praatt program (Booersma & Weenink, 2015). In tthe identificatiion test, there were 96 stimuulus sentences in total (6 sylllables × 4 tonnes × 2 samplees per tone × 2 sppeakers). Eachh sentence wass repeated 3 timmes and randoomized in the iidentification ttest, thus yielding a total numbber of 288 tokkens. In the fammiliarization taask, there werre 24 tokens inn total (3 syllaables × 4 tones × 2 speakers). All the stimulus sentences inn the identificaation test and ffamiliarizationn task were ranndomized. 124 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Before doiing the test, thhe intelligibilitty of the tones of the stimulii was evaluateed by 3 native mandarin speaakers (see Guionn, Flege, & Akahane-Yamadda, 2000; Wanng, Spence, Joongman, & Serreno, 1999). TThese compriseed of Chinese sstudents from Chiang Rai Rajabhat Uniiversity (2 femmale and 1 mmale; mean aage=20.42). The 3 participantts were asked to do a four-aalternative forcced-choice taskk with the stimmuli of the ideentification test and the familiaarization task. AAs a result, alll of the stimulii were correctly identified byy each of the 3 participants. 2.3 Proceddure A familiarization task was carried out prior to the identification tesst. This was deesigned to enaable the particippants to learn thhe tone labels (Tone 1: －, TTone 2: ／, TTone 3: ∨, Toone 4: ﹨) of tthe 4 Mandariin tones in thee task (see So & Best, 2010). Inn a quiet roomm, each particippant was askedd to sit in frontt of a desktop ccomputer, and wear a headphoone connected to the compuuter. The 24 tookens mentioneed above in seection 2.3 werre employed aas the stimuli. Thhe stimuli weere displayed on the compuuter screen, annd were linkeed to the pronnunciation. Onnce a stimulus tooken was clickked on, its auddio pronunciattion was played through the headphone the participants were wearing, wwith the tone label and namme displayed ssimultaneouslyy on the screeen. It was a seelf-paced task. The participantts were given 5 minutes to do the task. TThey were askked to listen too each of the speech samples as many timees as they couldd within the alllotted time. After the ffamiliarizationn task was commpleted, the paarticipants werre asked to doo a four-alternaative forced-chhoice identificatiion task. An aanswer sheet ((see Appendixx) was handedd out to individual participannts, on which they were askedd to select the right tone theyy heard by circcling the answer, even if gueessing. In the bbracket next to each item, they were asked too show their ddegree of conffiidence regardiing the correcttness of their aanswers by givven a score fromm 0 to 4 (0 = completely gguessing; 4 = absolutely surre about the aanswer) (Best et al., 1998). The inter-stimuulus interval (IISI) was 6 secconds. No feeddback was givven during the test. The inveestigator contrrolled the displayy of the recorddings from a ceentral computeer in the room. After the idenntification test wwas completedd, the investigatoor collected alll the participannts’ answer sheeets, and enterred the individdual participantts’ answers intto the SPSS proggram for the statistical analyssis. 3. Results 3.1 Generaal Results Figure 3. Thaai and English pparticipants’ accuracy in the perception off the 4 Mandariin Tones in the iddentification teest 125 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Figure 4. Thaai and English pparticipants’ accuracy in the perception off the 4 Mandariin Tones in the iddentification teest As show iin Figure 3, thhe overall resuults indicate thhat none of thhe participants achieved 1000% accuracy inn the identificatiion test. The TThai participannts’ results shoowed a higherr degree of acccuracy in the pperception of the 4 tones thann the English pparticipants. Inn particular, thhe Thai particippants’ degree of accuracy wwas much highher in the percepption of T1 andd T4 than Engliish participantts. The subjeccts’ ‘confidencce’ score in the identificationn of the 4 tones showed thaat some of ansswers were gueessed (see Figurre 3.2). Therefore, there miight be a channce of risks aattached to thee identificatioon test results. The participantts’ responses, therefore, werre further calcuulated into A--prime scores (A′) (Snodgrasss, Levy-Berger, & Haydon, 1985; also see SSo & Best, 2010). As displayyed in Table 1and Figure 5 bbelow, none off the participannts’ A′ score was above 0.9. Somme of them shhowed a near-bby-chance result (around 0.5)), which was consistent with their ‘confidencce’ scores. Mooreover, as wass the case withh the scores shhown in Figurre 4 above, thee Thai particippants’ mean A′ sscore was signnificantly highher than that of the Englissh participantss in the perceeption of T1 ((Thai speakers: 00.89 vs. Englissh speakers: 0.66) and T4 (TThai speakers: 0.71 vs. Engliish speakers: 00.68) (p<0.05). The differencess between theiir accuracies inn the identificcation of T2 (TThai speakers: 0.66 vs. Engllish speakers: 0.63) and T3 ((Thai speakerrs: 0.87 vs. English speaakers: 0.69), however, weere revealed to be statistiically non-signifficant (p>0.05)). Table 1. DDescriptive Stattistics of the paarticipants’ ressults in the idenntification testt Tone Participaant groups Range Minimum Maximumm Mean Std. Error English pparticipants 0.39 0.51 0.80 0.66 0.03 T1 Thai parrticipnats 0.18 0.78 0.96 0.89 0.01 English pparticipants 0.23 0.55 0.78 0.68 0.02 T2 Thai parrticipnats 0.34 0.58 0.92 0.71 0.02 English pparticipants 0.38 0.55 0.73 0.63 0.04 T3 Thai parrticipnats 0.20 0.58 0.78 0.66 0.03 English pparticipants 0.28 0.51 0.79 0.69 0.02 T4 Thai parrticipnats 0.17 0.78 0.95 0.87 0.01 126 www.ccsennet.org/elt English LLanguage Teachhing Vol. 9, No. 1;2016 Figure 5. The Thai and EEnglish particiipants’ A-primme scores in thee identificationn test To further analyze the paarticipants’ sennsitivity to thee 4 Mandarin ttones, their A′scores were cooded into the SSPSS program aand were analyyzed with a twwo-way ANOVAA. The group ddifference (Thaai group and EEnglish group)) was coded as aa between-subjects factor. Tonal difference(T1, T2, T3, aand T4) was cooded as the within-subjects ffactor. It turned oout that tonal difference (F (3, 60)=37.99, p<0.001) and the interactiion between toonal differencee and group difffference (F(3, 129)=43.07, p<0.001) were all found to have dispplayed significcant effect onn the participantts’ A′ scores ((Mauchly’s Teest of Sphericiity=0.518). Mooreover, as a between-subjeects factor, geender difference was found neeither to be non-significant ffor the Thai paarticipants (F((1, 19)=0.06, pp=0.81) nor foor the English paarticipants’ (F((1, 22)=0.37, pp=0.55) A′ scorres. An additioonal Pairwisee Comparisons test indicatted that the EEnglish particiipants’ mean differences inn the identificatiion of the 4 toones were statiistically insignnificant (p>0.005). In contrasst, however, thhe Thai particippants were reveaaled to be morre likely to perrceive Mandariin T1 and T4 tthan T2 and T3. The mean ddifferences betwween their A′ scoores in the identification of TT1 vs. T4 and T2 vs. T3 werre statistically insignificant ((p>0.05) (see TTable 2 below). Table 2. Paairwise compaarisons testing results TThai participannts English paarticipants (I) Tone (J) Tone MMean Differencce (I-J) Stdd. Error Sig. Mean Difffeerence (I-J) Std. Error Sig. T2 00.18 0.022 0.000 -0.02 0.02 0.23 T1 T3 00.23 0.022 0.000 0.03 0.02 0.10 T4 00.02 0.022 0.21 -0.03 0.02 0.19 T1 -00.18 0.022 0.000 0.02 0.02 0.23 T2 T3 00.05 0.033 0.077 0.05 0.02 0.00 T4 -00.16 0.022 0.000 0.00 0.02 0.86 T1 -00.23 0.022 0.000 -0.03 0.02 0.10 T3 T2 -00.05 0.033 0.077 -0.05 0.02 0.00 T4 -00.21 0.01 0.000 -0.05 0.02 0.02 T1 -00.02 0.022 0.21 0.03 0.02 0.19 T4 T2 00.16 0.022 0.000 0.00 0.02 0.86 T3 00.21 0.01 0.000 0.05 0.02 0.02 127 www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 3.2 Results of Tonal Confusions The above results indicated the participants’ tone sensitivity. Given that language listeners’ L1 phonology system may display influence on their perception of foreign tones (So & Best 2010; Wayland & Guion, 2004; Lee et al., 1996), it would be necessary to investigate the participants’ confusions on each tone. However, their answers (correct and incorrect ones) with a confidence score of 0 were excluded, because these responses were given by ‘totally guessing’. Table 3. Thai participants’ confusion matrices in the identification test Responses (%) target T1 T2 T3 T4 Total T1 82.01% 6.40% 5.94% 5.65% 100.00% T2 5.23% 67.25% 24.71% 2.81% 100.00% T3 3.20% 29.03% 60.98% 6.79% 100.00% T4 4.55% 6.77% 4.21% 84.47% 100.00% Table 3.4 English participants’ confusion matrices in the identification test Responses (%) target T1 T2 T3 T4 Total T1 60.29% 21.45% 9.97% 8.29% 100.00% T2 18.50% 64.08% 15.33% 2.09% 100.00% T3 9.34% 21.90% 59.01% 9.75% 100.00% T4 8.83% 9.44% 9.53% 72.20% 100.00% As show in Table 2 and Table 3 above, the Thai participants did not show serious confusion between T1 and the other 3 tones, as their confusions (incorrect responses) between T1 and T2, T1 and T3, T1 and T4 all counted around 6%. A similar phenomenon was found to occur between T4 and T1, T4 and T3. However, they displayed a comparatively much higher degree of confusion in the differentiation of T2-T3, as they incorrectly identified target T2 as T3 (incorrect response: 24.71%), and T3 as T2 (incorrect response: 29.03%). For the English speakers, they incorrectly identified target T1 as T2 with a percentage of 21.45%, and target T2 as T1 with a percentage of 18.50%. Moreover, the English participants also incorrectly identified target T2 as T3 and target T3 as T2 with a percentage of 15.33% and 21.90% respectively. The rest of the incorrect responses were all below 10%. Generally, therefore, the English participants showed significant confusions in the identification between T1 and T2 as well as between T2 and T3. 4. Discussion The present study examined whether tone language speakers could be better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers. The findings of the study provided somewhat complicated results. First of all, the overall results showed that the Thai participants outperformed the English participants in the perception of the 4 tones (see Figure 3 and Table 4). Therefore, it might be tempting to assume that tonal language speakers benefit more from their L1 experience in the perception of foreign lexical tones than do non-tonal language speakers. This finding is consistent with those presented by Lee et al. (1996) and Wayland and Guion (2004). However, the participant group showing better performance (Cantonese speakers) in Lee et al. (1996) had extensive exposure to Mandarin, while the Thai participants of the present study did not. In other words, compared to Lee et al. (1996), the Thai participants’ perception performance in the present study may be better able to provide supporting evidence for the influence of L1 on the perception of foreign lexical tones. Regarding the Wayland and Guion’s (2004) study, although the tonal language speakers (Chinese) outperformed the non-tone language speakers (English) in the perception of Thai tones both before and after being trained, they only tested the speakers’ identification of 2 Thai tones (mid tone vs. low tone). The second finding was that the Thai participants significantly outperformed the English participants in the 128 www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 identification of T1 and T4. Unexpectedly, n the perception of T2 and T3, the English participants’ A’ scores were only slightly lower than that of the Thai participants. Although the Thai participants’ good performance in the perception of T1 and T4 can be explained by the similarities between Mandarin and Thai tones, their low accuracy in the identification of T2 and T3 can hardly be attributed to this factor. However, this latter result could be explained by the fact that Mandarin T2 and T3 show shorter duration than their counterparts in Thai tones (Kwanrean, 2001). Moreover, So and Best (2010) suggests that T2-T3, T1-T2, T1-T4 are more confusable in terms of identification than other pairs, because they share some similar phonetic features. Another significant finding was that the two groups of participants showed different confusion patterns among the 4 Mandarin tones. Thai participants’ most significant confusion levels occurred in the identification between T2 and T3. The English participants, however, displayed serious confusions in T1-T2 and T2-T3. As discussed above, due to phonetic similarities, the 2 pairs of tones (T1-T2, T2-T3) are generally suggested to be more difficult to identify than the other tone pairs (So & Best, 2010). Moreover, the Thai participants’ confusion may be caused by the durational difference between T2, T3 and their counterparts in the Thai language. In addition, none of the participants achieved 100% accuracy in the identification test. In other words, even if the Thai participants were benefited by their L1, the degree of the benefit was limited. One of the limitations of the present study was that it lacked phonetic analysis, thus no evidence showed whether the English and Thai participants relied on the same acoustic cues in the identification test. As reported by Gandour (1983, 1984), English speakers identify lexical tones through the perception of pitch height, whereas Cantonese and Mandarin speakers rely on both pitch height and pitch direction. Therefore, it may be able to argue that in the present study, the acoustic cue(s) that the Thai participants rely on were different from those employed by the English participants. 5. Conclusion The present study investigated the influence of L1 influence on the perception of foreign lexical tones. The Thai and English participants’ perception of Mandarin tones was compared. The findings indicated the Thai participants’ overall accuracy of perception was higher than the English speakers. The Thai participants’ most serious confusion was in the identification between T2 and T3. The English participants, on the other hand, displayed significant difficulty in the identification of tone pairs T1-T2 and T2-T3. The findings suggested that L1 does affect language listeners’ identification of foreign lexical tones. Specifically, tone language speakers might be better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers. The unexpected finding of the study, which may shed some light on the topic of lexical tone perception, was that the English and Thai speakers displayed similar accuracy in the perception of Mandarin T2 and T3. In other words, the beneficial effect of tone language as an L1 is limited for the listeners’ perception of foreign Lexical tones. One of the limitations of the present study is that it did not examine whether the Thai and English participants relied on the same acoustic cues in the perception of the 4 Mandarin tones. Moreover, only Thai and English speakers’ perception of lexical tones was tested. It would be interesting to examine the perception performance of speakers of other languages in future studies. Reference Bauer, R. S., & Bendeict, P. K. (1997). Modern Cantonese Phonology. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110823707 Beckman, M. E. (1986). Stress and Non-stress Accent. Dordrecht: Foris. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110874020 Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Sithole, N. M. (1988). Examinatin of the perceptual re-organization for speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 345-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.14.3.345 Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2015). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.4.18) [Computer program]. Retrieved from http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research (pp. 171-204). Timonium, MD: York Press.
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 Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1999). Pitch accent in spoken-word recognition in Japanese. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 105(3), 1877-1888. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.426724 Duanmu, S. (2004). Tone and non-tone languages: An alternative to language typology and parameters. Language and Linguistics, 5(4), 891-923.
 Fox, A. (2000). Prosodic Features and Prosodic Structure: The Phonology of Suprasegmentals. New York: Oxford University Press.
 Gandour, J. T. (1983). Tone perception in Far Eastern languages. Journal of Phonetics, 11, 149-175. Gandour, J. T. (1984). Tone dissimilarity judgments by Chinese listeners. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 12, 235-261. Gottfried, T. L., & Suiter, T. L. (1997). Effect of linguistic experience on the identification of Mandarin Chinese vowels and tones. Journal of Phonetics, 25(2), 207-231. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1997.0042 Guessenhoven, C. (2004). The Phonology of Tone and Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511616983 Guion, S. G., Flege, J. E., Akahane-Yamada, R., & Pruitt, J. C. (2000). An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: The case of Japanese adults’ perception of English consonants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107(5), 2711-2724. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.428657 Hashimoto, A. O.-K. Y. (1972). Phonology of Cantonese. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kwanrean, T. (2001). The Comparison and Contrast of Mandarin and Thai Tones. Thesis for Master’s degree at Yunnan Normal University. Lee, Y.-S., Vakoch, D. A., & Wurm, L. H. (1996). Tone perception in Cantonese and Mandarin: A cross-linguistic comparison. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 25(5), 527-542. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01758181 Snodgrass, J. G., Levy-Berger, G., & Haydon, M. (1985). Human Experimental Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. So, C. K., & Best, C. K. (2010). Cross-language perception of non-native tonal contrasts: effects of native phonological and phonetic influences. Language and Speech, 53(2), 273-293. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830909357156 Tingsabadh, K., & Deeprasert, D. (1997). Tones in standard Thai connected speech. Southeast Asian Linguistic Studies in Honour of Vichin Panupong, 297-307. Thepboriruk, K. (2009). Bangkok Thai tones revisited. Journal of The Southeast Asian Linguistis Society, 3, 86-105. Wang, Y., Spence, M. M., Jongman, A., & Sereno, J. A. (1999). Training American listeners to perceive Mandarin tones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106(6), 3649-3658. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.428217 Wayland, R. P., & Guion, S. G. (2004). Training English and Chinese listeners to perceive Thai tones: A preliminary report. Language Learning, 54(4), 681-712. 
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2004.00283.x Ying, L. (2014). Coarticulation effect on L1-Mandarin speakers’ perception of English /s/-/z/. Opening New Lines of Communications in Applied Linguistics. Proceedings of the 46th Annual Meeting of the British Association for Applied Linguistic, 269-283. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0353-0398-8 Yip, M. (2002). Tone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139164559 Note 1. In the present paper, Thai refers to Bangkok Thai. 130 www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 9, No. 1; 2016 Appendix Stimulus sentences used in the identification test 1. 把di标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T1) 2. 把di标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T2) 3. 把di标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T3) 4. 把di标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the di) (T4) 5. 把da标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T1) 6. 把da标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T2) 7. 把da标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T3) 8. 把da标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the da) (T4) 9. 把du标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T1) 10. 把du标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T2) 11. 把du标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T3) 12. 把du标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the du) (T4) 13. 把chi标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the chi) (T1) 14. 把chi标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the chi) (T2) 15. 把chi标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the chi) (T3) 16. 把chi标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the chi (T4) 17. 把cha标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the cha) (T1) 18. 把cha标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the cha) (T2) 19. 把cha标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the cha) (T3) 20. 把cha标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the cha (T4) 21. 把chu标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the chu) (T1) 22. 把chi标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the chu) (T2) 23. 把chu标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the chu) (T3) 24. 把chu标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the chu (T4) Stimulus sentences used in the familiarization task: 1. 把ki标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 2. 把ki标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 3. 把ki标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 4. 把ki标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the ki )(T1) 5. 把ka标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 6. 把ka标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 7. 把ka标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 8. 把ka标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the ka)(T1) 9. 把ku标出来 (T1) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 10. 把ku标出来 (T2) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 11. 把ku标出来 (T3) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 12. 把ku标出来 (T4) (English meaning: Mark the ku)(T1) 131

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