The/N/Errors of Chinese L2 in Listening——A Pilot Test of Allophonic Variations

【摘要】：Acquiring the Japanese moraic nasal/N/is one of the major problems for JL2,since/N/has many allophones and two durational categories:short and long.There has been considerable research based on experiments with the durational distinction of/N/,whereas there have been fewer experiments on the allophonic variations of/N/,not only in phonetics but also in the study of language acquisition. Nowadays there are a great number of Chinese learners of Japanese(CJFL) in the world.For this reason we conducted an experiment concerning the level of acquisition of/N/by CJFL from the standpoint of the perception of allophonic variations. Test words,of which there were 87,contained bilabial, alveolar,velar,uvular,and palatal nasals as allophones of/N/. The subjects were five CJFL.For the comparison,seven Japanese speakers(JL1)were also tested using the same method.As a result,it was at least clarified that(1) JL1 although they made errors their ratios were lower than CJFL, and(2) CJFL had difficulty in perceiving the durational differences between vowels and consonants,and in differentiating voiceless and voiced consonants,or vice versa. Further,the CJFL strategy seemed to attempt to use a nasal with which the speakers were familiar.This could show that their errors were caused by first language interference. In conclusion,the findings of the experiment indicate that the allophonic variations of/N/are sufficient to pose a learning problem for CJFL,in terms of perception.