Articulatory characteristics and vowel space analysis of Mandarin Chinese non-low vowels in Korean-speaking learners
Abstract
Vowels are a fundamental component of Mandarin Chinese syllables. Accurate pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese relies on the distinct articulation of different vowels, especially the visually similar “ü” and “u”. Korean-speaking learners of Chinese Mandarin as a second language commonly exhibit non-standard pronunciation or errors in articulating “ü”, leading to confusion, particularly in non-low vowels centered around this sound. Using Praat to analyze the Formant values of non-low vowel sounds from six participants, a comparison between Korean L2 Chinese speakers and native Chinese speakers revealed vowel spaces differentiated through F2 values for /u/ and /o/, while /ɣ/ and /o/ are distinguished by F1 values. The sound similar to Korean “ㅟ” differs from /y/ in that the former is a gliding sound transitioning from low to high. The distinction between /y/ and /u/, /o/, /ɣ/ was found to be unclear, with /y/ often merging into sounds like “iu” and “io”. This aligns with historical vowel changes in Chinese “ü”, noted in previous linguistic studies, showing variations like “iu” and “io” over different periods. Korean L2 Chinese speakers tend to substitute /ɯ/ for /u/ and “ㅟ” (/ɯ/+/i/) for /y/, avoiding rounded lip movements in pronunciation, thus reducing effort and the need for additional phonemes. Furthermore, the F3 value for Korean L2 Chinese /y/ is notably lower, suggesting that the correct articulation should closely resemble the tongue position of /i/, combined with rounded lips.
References
[1] Alwan, A., Narayanan, S., & Haker, K. (1997). Toward articulatory-acoustic models for liquid approximants based on MRI and EPG data. Part II. The rhotics. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101(2), 1078–1089. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.417972
[2] Ao, X. (1993). Phonetics and phonology of Nantong Chinese [Ph.D. dissertation]. The Ohio State University.
[3] Barkana, B. D., & Patel, A. (2020). Analysis of vowel production in Mandarin/Hindi/American- accented English for accent recognition systems. Applied Acoustics, 162, 107203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2019.107203
[4] Cao, Y., Font-Rotchés, D., & Rius-Escudé, A. (2023). Front vowels of Spanish: A challenge for Chinese speakers. Open Linguistics, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-0230
[5] Chao, Y. (1934). The non-uniqueness of phonemic solutions of phonetic systems. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philosophy, Academia Sinica. 4(4), 363–397.
[6] Chao, Y. (1968). A grammar of spoken Chinese. University of California Press.
[7] Chen, M. Y. (2000). Tone Sandhi. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511486364
[8] Chen, Y. (2008). The acoustic realization of vowels of Shanghai Chinese. Journal of Phonetics, 36(4), 629–648. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2008.03.001
[9] Cheng, R. L. (1966). Mandarin phonological structure. Journal of Linguistics, 2(2), 135–158. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022226700001444
[10] Chung, H. (2020). Vowel acoustic characteristics of Southern American English variation in Louisiana. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(1), 541–553. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000505
[11] Davidson, L. (2006). Comparing tongue shapes from ultrasound imaging using smoothing spline analysis of variance. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120(1), 407–415. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2205133
[12] Davidson, L., & De Decker, P. (2005). Stabilization techniques for ultrasound imaging of speech articulations. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117(4_Supplement), 2544–2544. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4788460
[13] Duanmu, S. (2007). The Phonology of Standard Chinese. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199215782.001.0001
[14] Epstein, M. A., & Stone, M. (2005). The tongue stops here: Ultrasound imaging of the palate. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118(4), 2128–2131. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2031977
[15] Farrington, C., Kendall, T., & Fridland, V. (2018). Vowel Dynamics in the Southern Vowel Shift. American Speech, 93(2), 186–222. https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-6926157
[16] Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research, 92, 233-277.
[17] Flege, J. E., & Bohn, O.-S. (2021). The Revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r). Second Language Speech Learning, 3–83. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108886901.002
[18] Han, M. (2021). Acoustic Study on the Acquisition of Mandarin Level Tone Vowels by Rwandan Students [Master’s thesis]. Lanzhou University.
[19] Hartman, L. M. (1944). The Segmental Phonemes of the Peiping Dialect. Language, 20(1), 28. https://doi.org/10.2307/410379
[20] Hedrick, M., & Thornton, K. (2024). Reaction time for correct identification of vowels in consonant-vowel syllables and of vowel segments. JASA Express Letters, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0024334
[21] Howie, JM. (1976). Acoustical studies of Mandarin vowels and tones. Cambridge University Press.
[22] Hu, H. J., & Shi, F. (2018). Statistical analysis of the fourth level vowels in Beijing Mandarin. Chinese Journal of Phonetics, (01), 32-41.
[23] Huang, B., & Liao, X. (1983). Modern Mandarin. Gansu People’s Publishing House.
[24] Iskarous, K., Shadle, C. H., & Proctor, M. I. (2011). Articulatory–acoustic kinematics: The production of American English /s/. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129(2), 944–954. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3514537
[25] Jin, W. (2012). Variation and change in Chinese Korean: The case of vowel /y/. Language Variation and Change, 24(1), 79–106. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0954394512000038
[26] Kim, T. W. (2002). A Study on the Etymology of Korean through Chinese Archaic Sounds. Journal of Chinese Humanities, 24, 107-124.
[27] Ladefoged, P., & Wu, Z. (1984). Places of articulation: an investigation of Pekingese fricatives and affricates. Journal of Phonetics, 12(3), 267–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0095-4470(19)30883-6
[28] Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers. University of Michigan Press.
[29] Lee, W.-S., & Zee, E. (2003). Standard Chinese (Beijing). Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 33(1), 109–112. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0025100303001208
[30] Lee-Kim, S.-I. (2014). Revisiting Mandarin ‘apical vowels’: An articulatory and acoustic study. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 44(3), 261–282. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0025100314000267
[31] Li, M., Kambhamettu, C., & Stone, M. (2005). Automatic contour tracking in ultrasound images. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 19(6–7), 545–554. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699200500113616
[32] Li, Y., & Kong, J. (2014). Effects of focal stress on the articulatory and acoustic properties of segments in Standard Chinese. The 9th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing. https://doi.org/10.1109/iscslp.2014.6936649
[33] Lin, Y. (2007). The sounds of Chinese. Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/9780521603980
[34] Lisker, L. (1963). Introduction to spoken Telugu. Americal Council of Learned Societies.
[35] Liu, C., Xu, C., Wang, Y., Xu, L., Zhang, H., & Yang, X. (2021). Aging Effect on Mandarin Chinese Vowel and Tone Identification in Six-Talker Babble. American Journal of Audiology, 30(3), 616–630. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_aja-20-00139
[36] Lu, J. (1984). Interlanguage theories and an analysis of phonetic errors in Mandarin learning by foreigners. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies, 3, 44–56.
[37] Marko, A., Bartok, M., Csapo, T. G., et al. (2019). “The effect of focal accent on vowels in Hungarian: Articulatory and acoustic data,” In: Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), pp. 2015–2719.
[38] Markó, A., Bartók, M., Gráczi, T. E., Deme, A., & Csapó, T. G. (2018). Prominence Effects on Hungarian Vowels: A Pilot Study. Speech Prosody 2018. https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2018-175
[39] Martin, SE. (1992). A reference grammar of Korean. Charles E. Tuttle.
[40] McLoughlin, I. (2010). Vowel Intelligibility in Chinese. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 18(1), 117–125. https://doi.org/10.1109/tasl.2009.2024381
[41] Narayanan, S., Byrd, D., & Kaun, A. (1999). Geometry, kinematics, and acoustics of Tamil liquid consonants. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106(4), 1993–2007. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.427946
[42] OSF (2023). Contribution of acoustic cues to prominence ratings for four Mandarin vowels. Available online: https://osf.io/395xu/?view_only=041beb8107594900a687fd4cdeff489e (accessed on 15 November 2023).
[43] Pierson, D. K. R., Simpson, D. K., Creaghead, D. N., & Herreras-Mercado, D. R. (2024). Vowel Centered Accent Modification in Mandarin Chinese Speaking Pilot Candidates. The International Journal of Aerospace Psychology, 1-17.
[44] Rennison, J. (2018). On Tridirectional Feature Systems for Vowels *. Dependency and Non-Linear Phonology, 281–303. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429452918-11
[45] Renwick, M. E. L., & Stanley, J. A. (2020). Modeling dynamic trajectories of front vowels in the American South. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(1), 579–595. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000549
[46] Sarvasy, H., Elvin, J., Li, W., & Escudero, P. (2020). An acoustic phonetic description of Nungon vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(4), 2891–2900. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0001003
[47] Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International Review of Applied linguistics in Language Teaching, 10(1–4). https://doi.org/10.1515/iral.1972.10.1-4.209
[48] Shaw, J. A., Chen, W., Proctor, M. I., & Derrick, D. (2016). Influences of Tone on Vowel Articulation in Mandarin Chinese. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 59(6). https://doi.org/10.1044/2015_jslhr-s-15-0031
[49] Shin Ji-young (2016). The Sounds of Korean Language. Bak Ijeong.
[50] Steriade, D. (1999). Phonetics in phonology: The case of laryngeal neutralization. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics: Papers in Phonology, 3, 25–145.
[51] Stevens, KN. (1998). Acoustic phonetics. MIT Press.
[52] Sun, X. (2009). Analysis of the acoustic characteristics of vowels in the international phonetic alphabet symbol system [PhD thesis]. Nankai University.
[53] Wang, X., & Munro, M. J. (1999). The perception of English tense-lax vowel pairs by native Mandarin speakers: The effect of training on attention to temporal and spectral cues. In: Proceedings of the 14th international congress of phonetic sciences (Vol. 3, pp. 125–128). University of California.
[54] Wang, Y. (2001). A preliminary study of the perception of high vowels in Mandarin by Korean and Japanese learners. Language Teaching and Linguistic Studies, (6), 8-17.
[55] Wang, Y. (2011). Smoothing Splines. Chapman and Hall/CRC. https://doi.org/10.1201/b10954
[56] Wang, Y., & Deng, D. (2009). The acquisition of the“unfamiliar vowels” and “similar vowels” in Mandarin by Japanese learners. Mandarin Teaching in the World, 2, 262–279.
[57] Wenkai, C. (2015). A Study on the Sound Change Process of the Korean Vowel ‘ㅟ’—In Comparison with the Chinese Vowels ‘ui’, ‘ü’]. Proceedings of the International Conference on Korean Language and Culture, 80-94.
[58] Wiese, R. (1997). Underspecifícation and the description of Chinese vowels. Studies in Chinese Phonology, 219–250. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110822014.219
[59] Xiong, Z., & Wang, M. (2018). Effect of Anticipatory Vowel-to-Vowel Coarticulation at Different Prosodic Boundaries in Chinese. 2018 11th International Symposium on Chinese Spoken Language Processing (ISCSLP). https://doi.org/10.1109/iscslp.2018.8706652
[60] Xue, F. S. (1982). On the relationship between phonetic change and phonetic structure. Language Studies, (02), 11-17.
[61] Yang, B. (1996). A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers. Journal of Phonetics, 24(2), 245–261. https://doi.org/10.1006/jpho.1996.0013
[62] Yu, K., & Arkin, G. (2022). A contrastive study on the production of double vowels in Mandarin. Applied Mathematics and Nonlinear Sciences, 7(2), 655–664. https://doi.org/10.2478/amns.2022.1.00006
[63] Yu, S. (2009). Excitation patterns and phonetic identities of Chinese vowels. Science in China Series F: Information Sciences, 52(10), 1936–1946. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-009-0164-z
[64] Yuan, J. (2013). The spectral dynamics of vowels in Mandarin Chinese. Interspeech 2013. https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2013-18
[65] Yue, Y., & Hu, F. (2018). Vowels and Diphthongs in Hangzhou Wu Chinese Dialect. Interspeech 2018. https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2018-1225
[66] Zhang, J. S. (2023). On the phonemes of Chinese vowels. Contemporary Linguistics, (01), 144-158.
[67] Zhang, M., & Hu, F. (2017). Diphthongized vowels in the Xiuning Hui Chinese Dialect. 2017 20th Conference of the Oriental Chapter of the International Coordinating Committee on Speech Databases and Speech I/O Systems and Assessment (O-COCOSDA). https://doi.org/10.1109/icsda.2017.8384458
[68] Zhang, W., & Clayards, M. (2023). Contribution of acoustic cues to prominence ratings for four Mandarin vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 154(5), 3364–3373. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0022410
[69] Zhang, W., & Liao, Y. (2023). The role of auditory processing in L2 vowel learning: evidence from recasts. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-023-02001-5
[70] Zhao, Y. (2022). Front vowel chain shift and the vowel rephonologization in Early Middle Chinese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 50(1), 231–258. https://doi.org/10.1353/jcl.2022.0009
[71] Zhou, A. N., & Dmitrieva, O. (2022). The perception of English vowels by native Korean and Mandarin speakers. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 152(4_Supplement), A264–A264. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0016221
[72] Zhu, C., & Wang, J. (1997). A study on the sound type for Mandarin as an interlanguage. The 5th international conference on mandarin language pedagogy.
[73] Zhu, W., Lee, S.-H., & Zhang, X. (2023). Language-dependent cue weighting in distinctive feature: evidence from the perception of Mandarin high vowels by native English speakers. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-023-00204-6
Copyright (c) 2024 Di Duan
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The author(s) warrant that permission to publish the article has not been previously assigned elsewhere.
Author(s) shall retain the copyright of their work and grant the Journal/Publisher right for the first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under:
OA - Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0). This license allows for the copying, distribution and transmission of the work, provided the correct attribution of the original creator is stated. Adaptation and remixing are also permitted.
This broad license intends to facilitate free access to, as well as the unrestricted reuse of, original works of all types.
_%E5%89%AF%E6%9C%AC1.png){kind=logo}
