The Acquisition of Italian Consonant Sounds by Mandarin Chinese-Speaking Learners

The acquisition of Italian consonant sounds by Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners has hardly been empirically investigated. This doctoral dissertation aims to fill this gap by investigating three areas which have been documented to be problematic for Chinese leaners, that is, how Chinese learners acquire Italian voiced vs. voiceless stop consonant contrast, singleton vs. geminate consonant contrast, and lateral vs. rhotic consonant contrast. In the first study, twenty Mandarin Chinese-speaking undergraduate students majoring in Italian, five native Italian and five native Mandarin speakers served as participants in a perception experiment; and an equal number of participants with the same language backgrounds served as participants in a production experiment. In the perception experiment, the participants had to identify the stimuli in three continua (i.e., bilabial, alveolar and velar) where voice onset time (VOT) values ranged from −50ms to 90ms in 10ms steps. In the production experiment, data were collected from a reading task in which the participants were asked to read the target words with word-initial stops in carrier-sentences; the VOT and closure durations were measured. The results show that, in perception, Chinese learners have difficulty differentiating between Italian voiced and voiceless stops; in production, Italian voiced rather than voiceless stops represent a challenge for Chinese learners. The second study had ten first-year, ten second-year and ten third-year Chinese undergraduate students majoring in Italian and ten native Italian-speaking controls as participants. In the perception experiment, the participants had to identify ten Italian disyllabic minimal pairs contrasting in consonant length. In the production experiment, the participants were asked to read five out of the ten minimal pairs mentioned above; the duration values of the intervocalic consonants and the preconsonantal vowels were measured and converted into duration ratios for statistical analyses. The results show that, in both perception and production, Chinese learners can distinguish between the two consonant length categories in Italian to a certain extent, but not in a native-like manner. Also, the duration interplay between Italian consonants and preconsonantal vowels (i.e., longer vowels before singleton consonants and shorter vowels before geminate consonants) is entirely ignored by Chinese learners. Moreover, Chinese learners’ increased learning experience does not appear to enhance their acquisition of Italian consonant length contrast. The participants of the third study were thirty Chinese learners of Italian with different learning experiences and ten native Italian speakers. In the perception experiment, the participants identified six Italian minimal pairs contrasting in /r-l/. In the production experiment, the participants read the six minimal pairs, and their productions were assessed by three native Italian-speaking raters. The results show that, in perception, Chinese learners have some difficulty differentiating between Italian /r-l/ contrast. In production, Chinese learners have more difficulty properly realizing Italian /r/ than /l/, and show the tendency to replace /r/ with /l/. Also, while Chinese learners’ production of Italian /r-l/ contrast varies with their increased learning experience, their perceptual accuracy remains unchanged. All in all, this doctoral dissertation provides a detailed picture of how Chinese learners acquire the stop contrast, consonant length contrast, and /r-l/ contrast in Italian, showing that the three consonant contrasts pose acquisition difficulties for Mandarin Chinese-speaking learners. Moreover, the plausible reasons for these acquisition difficulties are discussed.