Mandarin is one of the most representative tonal languages in the world with four tone categories (Tone 1 (T1): high level (ā); Tone 2 (T2): high rising (á); Tone 3 (T3): dipping (ǎ); Tone 4 (T4): high falling (à)). Learning Mandarin tones is known to be difficult for speakers from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The perception of Mandarin tones by naïve, non-native listeners from two tonal languages with a larger tone inventory than Mandarin—Thai and Vietnamese—was examined. The listeners’ discrimination accuracy of six tone pairs (T1–T2, T1–T3, T1–T4, T2–T3, T2–T4, T3–T4) was assessed and compared to that of native speakers of Mandarin on the one hand and Australian English on the other hand. The Thai and Vietnamese groups were clearly less accurate than the Mandarin group and showed a different pattern of results from each other. The Australian English group was less accurate than the Thai group only for T2–T4 and did not differ from the Vietnamese group for any of the pairs. Taken together, these findings suggest that first language tone knowledge may not necessarily be facilitative and that lack of experience with lexical tones may not disadvantage listeners from non-tonal language backgrounds in processing unfamiliar tones.

中文翻译：

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亚洲语言使用者是相似还是不同？来自声调语言背景的幼稚听者对普通话词汇声调的感知：泰国和越南听者的初步比较

普通话是世界上最具代表性的声调语言之一，有四种声调类别（声调1（T1）：高水平（ā）；声调2（T2）：高升（á）；声调3（T3）：浸渍（ǎ） )；音 4 (T4)：高音下降 (à))。众所周知，对于来自不同语言背景的人来说，学习普通话声调很困难。检查了来自两种声调语言比普通话（泰语和越南语）有更大声调清单的天真非母语听众对普通话声调的感知。一方面评估了听众对六个音调对（T1–T2、T1–T3、T1–T4、T2–T3、T2–T4、T3–T4）的辨别准确度，并与母语为普通话的人进行了比较，另一方面，澳大利亚英语。泰国组和越南组显然不如普通话组准确，并且显示出彼此不同的结果模式。仅在 T2-T4 方面，澳大利亚英语组不如泰语组准确，并且在任何对中都与越南语组没有区别。综上所述，这些研究结果表明，第一语言声调知识可能不一定具有促进作用，并且缺乏词汇声调经验可能不会使非声调语言背景的听众在处理不熟悉的声调方面处于不利地位。