The perception of lexical tones in emotional speech by Dutch learners of Mandarin.

Abstract

Past work on tonal perception in L2 Mandarin has focused on the citation forms of the tones produced in neutral emotion. However, an additional tone can be added to the citation tone or the citation tone can end at higher pitch level to express emotion in Mandarin. The current study examined tonal perception in different emotions (i.e., neutral, happy, angry, sad) and tonal contexts in Mandarin by Dutch learners of Mandarin, compared to native controls. It was found that both the L2 learners and native controls were significantly less accurate in the anger condition, compared to the neutral condition. Furthermore, although the intermediate-advanced learners performed better than the beginners, neither learner group differed significantly from the native controls. These results suggest that the L2 learners have acquired the phonological forms of the tones and their tonal perception was only affected when the surface forms underwent substantial changes in emotional speech.