Production of English Consonant Clusters and Compensatory Strategies Used by Mandarin L2 Learners

College of Health Professions & Science, Gapinski, Sonja, Mentor, Poster Presentation, School and College, School of Rehabilitation Sciences & Technology, Student, Yang, Jing

Sonja Gapinski, “Production of English Consonant Clusters and Compensatory Strategies Used by Mandarin L2 Learners”
Mentor: Jing Yang, Rehabilitation Sciences & Technology
Poster #67

A consonant cluster is a combination of consonants in a syllable without an intervening vowel. English contains many consonant clusters that are not present in other languages, such as Mandarin. This study aims at understanding the phonological processes and compensatory strategies used by Mandarin-speakers when producing English consonant clusters. To investigate this, 6 native English speakers (L1) and 10 native Mandarin speakers learning English (L2) were recorded producing a list of nonsense, monosyllabic words containing selected three-component consonant clusters in the coda position in the form of /bvCC/. The vowels preceding the target cluster are the corner vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/. The nonsense words were embedded in a carrier sentence, “I read the word xx for you.” All participants were recorded in a sound-treated room using a digital recorded at a 44.1 kHz sample rate and a 16-bit quantization rate. The speech recordings were segmented into individual sentences and the target monosyllabic words were isolated to examine the phonological processes used by L1 and L2 speakers. Three main phonological processes in the production of the target clusters will be examined: metathesis, the transposition of two sounds; omission, the deletion of a consonant sound within the cluster; and vowel epenthesis, the addition of a vowel sound within the consonant cluster. These three phonological processes will be examined, and the target words will be transcribed for both the native English speakers’ and Mandarin L2 speakers’ production. The occurrence rate of each process in the tested cluster for each speaker will be compared. This data, can help us better understand how simple syllabic languages produce complex English consonant clusters and how those speakers compensate for the fact that those clusters are not present in their native language.