Native and non-native identification of Norwegian word tones

Norwegian is a language which to a certain degree exploits tonal differences to distinguish between lexical entities. An earlier study (van Dommelen & Husby, 2008) investigated discrimination as well as identification of the two Norwegian word tones by representatives of a tonal (German) and a non-tonal language (Chinese). In both perceptual tasks, the Chinese appeared to outperform the German listeners. Both groups of L2 users were beginners in a course on Norwegian. Therefore, overall performance was relatively poor, particularly in identification. An unexpected outcome was that Chinese identification was only somewhat better than German performance. The present paper is a follow-up study looking into production and perception of Norwegian word tones by German and Chinese speakers at a more advanced level of L2 learning. In the production part we investigate to what extent the L2 users are able to produce tonal contours 1 and 2. Both auditory as well as acoustic analysis will be used to evaluate the word tones. The perception part of the study will use two types of stimulus material. The first type will contain words with original tone 1 and tone 2 contours that are manipulated to create a continuum varying between tone 1 and 2. In the second type of material only the tonal contours of the words from test 1 will be made audible (as “humming”). These two different types of material will be used to investigate perceptual performance of Chinese and German as well as native listeners. Perceptual testing will involve both tone identification and discrimination tasks. It is hypothesized that in identification as well as discrimination Chinese subjects will perform better than Germans. In addition, it is expected that the difference in performance in the non-lexical test will be larger than in the test using words. In correlation analyses it will be investigated to what extent appropriate perception is a prerequisite for appropriate production of Norwegian word tones van Dommelen, W. A. & Husby, O. A. (2008): Perception of Norwegian word tones by Chinese and German listeners. In New Sounds 2007: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech. Florianópolis, Brazil, 165-174.