This is a study of Mandarin third tone (T3) sandhi produced by learners learning Mandarin as a second language, third language, or heritage language. I investigate factors affecting learners’ Mandarin T3 sandhi performance measured by two constructs, comprehensibility and accentedness. T3 sandhi in Mandarin is a phonological property that learners of Mandarin need to acquire on top of the four lexical tones (i.e., Tone 1 high level, Tone 2 rising tone, Tone 3 dipping tone, and Tone 4 falling tone). T3 sandhi is a process that which lexical tones alternate categorically, changing from the underlying tone sequence of T3T3 to T2T3. This process is motivated by the underlying trochaic feet of Mandarin (Qu, 2013). 67 Chinese learners passed the screening test (i.e., reading monosyllabic words with satisfactory tone production) to ensure that they could produce basic lexical tones before their tone sandhi production was evaluated. The eligible learners’ reading of the experimental wordlist that consists of 40 disyllabic words (i.e., 20 sandhi words and 20 non-sandhi words) was judged by 20 native speakers of Chinese in terms of comprehensibility and accentedness on a scale of 1 to 9 (e.g., Munro & Derwing, 1995; Saito, Trofimovich & Isaacs, 2017). The primary findings of the study are 1) Comprehensibility and accentedness were confirmed to be two distinct constructs as learners were found to perform significantly differently on these two constructs (both p < .05). 2) Previously learned foot structure, either from first or second language (L1footness or L2footness), were found significantly predict L3 comprehensibility and accentedness. L1footness was correlated with better performance: higher comprehensibility and lower accentedness ratings. The finding of L2footness’ correlation with worse performance in comprehensibility and accentedness was confounding but caused by low exposure to the target language Mandarin. 3) Exposure to the target language, measured by total learning length, the number of Chinese courses taken and total time spent in China, was found significantly influence comprehensibility and accentedness. This shows the importance of teasing apart effects of exposure and language transfer in L3 acquisition studies, which echoes with Puig-Mayenco and Rothman (2020). 4) Heritage learners were not found to have any acquisitional advantages over non-heritage learners as there were no significant differences between heritage versus non-heritage learners. Furthermore, Cantonese learners were found to perform worse than L2 learners on T3 sandhi words (where T3 sandhi rules need to apply) but not on non-sandhi words due to their lack of foot structure in their heritage language Cantonese. This suggests the heterogeneous nature of the Chinese heritage learner population, and Cantonese heritage learners and Mandarin heritage learners should be distinguished at least for prosodic feature acquisition. / Graduate

The present study examined the ability of 4th year students of Russian as a second language to use intonation to form intelligible questions. 25 speakers were recorded asking a question in which they were supposed to stress one word in the question using intonation, as is standard in Russian. They then received an intelligibility score based on whether the native Russian raters correctly understood that they were asking a question and what they were asking a question about. Additionally, native speakers rated the speech samples on accentedness, meaning how much the speech deviated from native norms and comprehensibility, meaning how difficult it was to understand the speaker. Both of these last two constructs, i.e., comprehensibility and accentedness were rated using a Likert scale. It was then examined whether there was correlation between intelligibility, comprehensibility and accentedness. This study found the L2 speakers of Russian were correctly understood as asking a question 89% of the time, but what the question was about was only correctly understood at a rate of 39%. Correlation was found between accentedness and comprehensibility, meaning that speakers with better accentedness also received higher comprehensibility scores. But no correlation was found between intelligibility and accentedness nor with comprehensibility. The study concludes with suggestions of why intonation is, in fact, important in communication and suggests areas for improvement in pedagogical settings as well as directions for future research which would include context-based dialogues and the use of Praat in judging statements.

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The aim of this study is to investigate whether blind individuals display cognitive advantages over sighted individuals with regard to second language acquisition. Previous studies from neuropsychology have indicated that this is the case. It has been found that blind L1 speakers can compensate for loss of vision by developing better perceptual and cognitive skills compared to sighted individuals, skills that are highly relevant to language acquisition. These studies do not, however, investigate blind L2 speakers, for whom it is not clear whether these advantages are also found.  In all, 80 adults participated in the study: 40 L2 speakers of Swedish (11 early blind, 9 late blind, 20 sighted, AO&lt;18) and a matching group and subgroups of L1 speakers. These speakers underwent tests on speech perception in noise, accentedness in an L2 and memory functions. The results revealed that L2 speakers are at a great disadvantage perceiving speech in noise compared to L1 speakers, and that there was no advantage associated with blindness. In the L1 speakers group, however, the results revealed that the early blind had advantages compared to the late blind and sighted in white noise, but that both blind groups were more negatively affected by babble noise than the sighted. The results in relation to accentedness in an L2 revealed that there were no advantages associated with blindness. The results further revealed there were no advantages associated with blindness on the episodic memory test. The results did, however, reveal that the early blind performed significantly better than the late blind and sighted on all phonological short-term memory tests and that both the early and late blind were significantly better than the sighted on recognition memory for new words, irrespective of language background. The conclusion is that blindness is associated with advantages in, for example, ability to learn new words and syntax, acquisition rate, ultimate L2 attainment, and language aptitude.

This thesis presents a study of the relationship between test-takers’ first language, listening proficiency and their performance on paired speaking tests. Forty participants from two different L1 backgrounds (20 Urdu and 20 Thai) participated in the study. They took two paired speaking tests: one with a shared L1 partner, and one with a non-shared L1 partner, as well as a listening test and a monologic speaking test to measure their listening ability and individual speaking ability. After each paired speaking test, the participants were also interviewed about their test-taking experience. All speaking tests and interviews were video recorded and transcribed. Raters awarded test-takers analytical speaking test scores (grammar and vocabulary, discourse management, pronunciation and interactive communication) and provided comments to justify their scores. Raters also participated in a stimulated recall session. The mixed-methods approach was utilised in analysing and triangulating different data sources. The data analysed in this study included listening and speaking test scores, raters’ perceptions of the test-takers’ speaking performance gathered from stimulated recalls and test-takers’ stimulated recall interviews, as well as the interactional discourse data in the paired speaking formats. The combination of quantitative analysis, Conversation Analysis (CA) and thematic analysis informed the relationship between test-takers’ listening proficiency, their L1 and their paired speaking performance.

English has become an essential part in our lives. It is inevitable to formulate an opinion when we meet a new person, and in particular we tend to focus our attention on the way this person speaks. The present research aims to answer the questions on how a European audience (Italian audience) perceives different varieties of English to which it is exposed. Four different speakers from four different Southeast and East Asian countries were selected and recorded while reading a short text. These recordings were submitted to the audience, which was asked to answer a set of questions about comprehensibility and likability. Results show that the audience elected as their favourite speaker the clearest accent to hear, thus suggesting that the members of the audience might have been influenced by comprehensibility and accentedness in the first place. Other variables, such as expressiveness, were not significantly considered by the participants.