CFL learners’ Mandarin syllable-tone word production: effects of task and prior phonological and lexical learning

Abstract This study examined beginner-level Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners’ production of newly learned words in an image naming and pinyin-reading task. Fifteen L1-English CFL learners learned 10 tonal monosyllabic minimal pairs (e.g., shu1 and shu3) in a three-day sound-image word learning experiment. Ten of the 20 words were homophonous with previously learned words (e.g., participants already knew that shu1 means ‘book’), while the other 10 were not (e.g., no shu3 words had been learned). Ten of the 20 words had frequent phonology participants were familiar with (e.g., shi is a high token frequency syllable), while the other 10 had infrequent phonology (e.g., ku is a low token frequency syllable). On the last day of learning, participants performed an image naming task followed by a pinyin-reading task. The recoded word tokens from both tasks were then played to 10 native Chinese speakers who were asked to transcribe the words in pinyin. The results showed that overall word production in the pinyin-reading task was more accurate than image naming. The pinyin-reading advantage was robust, but homophone status and syllable token frequency also interacted with task type: learners produced syllables with high token frequency but without homophones equally well in the pinyin-reading and naming tasks. These results suggest phonological encoding in long-term memory based on pinyin orthography can be affected by learners’ prior phonological and lexical knowledge. Pedagogical applications and limitations of the study are discussed, as well.