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Voice Onset Time In Chinese Learners of English

Voice Onset Time In Chinese Learners of English. Major Sharpe. Introduction: Research Area. Contrastive phonology Language acquisition Processes related to bilingualism Voice onset time (VOT):. Aim/Justification. The VOT of English stops depends on voicing

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Voice Onset Time In Chinese Learners of English

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  1. Voice Onset Time In Chinese Learners of English • Major Sharpe

  2. Introduction: Research Area • Contrastive phonology • Language acquisition • Processes related to bilingualism • Voice onset time (VOT):

  3. Aim/Justification • The VOT of English stops depends on voicing • Chinese ESL speakers must learn to produce voiced stops because Mandarin lacks them • Their intelligibility when producing voiced stops depends on VOT • This topic should be addressed when teaching Chinese ESL speakers intelligibility

  4. References • Research Basis: • Thornburgh, Dianne F. 1998. Voice Onset Time in Spanish-English Bilinguals: Early Versus Late Learners of English. Journal of Communicative Disorders 31, 215–229. • Supporting Articles: • Mandarin VOT, changes in Mandarin VOT depending on tone/aspiration, English VOT

  5. Research Questions • Do Mandarin speakers accurately produce English VOT? • Do Mandarin unaspirated stops have the same VOT as English voiceless stops, and if so, is that the sound Mandarin speakers produce when speaking English? • Is their English VOT reflected by proper/improper intonation?

  6. Methodology • Sources • Spontaneous speech samples given by OPIE students I will collect myself • ~10 examples from students who learned English before age 12 (à la my primary source) and ~10 from students who learned English after age 12 • For English speech samples, I will use the Santa Barbara Corpus of American English

  7. Subjects • About 20 Chinese OPIE students at the intermediate level (AE 50) • 1/2 will have learned English before age 12 • 1/2 will have learned English after age 12

  8. Procedure • Build a corpus of 20 10-to-15-minute spontaneous speech samples. Ideally, what the subjects say will not be directly controlled or manipulated • Transcribe corpus • Use software to create waveforms and determine VOT of various stops

  9. Anticipated Problems/Limitations of the Study • Intermediate Chinese speakers have not yet mastered the rules of English aspiration; potentially, there may not be much data for aspirated English consonants • 20 intermediate students may be a gross exaggeration (and definitely a gross amount!) • Will spontaneous speech give me all the data I need?

  10. Expected Findings • A part of the process of learning voiced English stops was implicitly learning VOT rules • Those who learned English before 12 know English VOT rules better

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