Institute for Chinese Studies presents the "Global and Transnational Experiences" Lecture Series
"Do I Still Sound Different? - Exploring Native and Non-Native Prosody"
Flyer: 
Ok Joo Lee Flyer.pdf
Abstract:
It is widely known that non-native speech particularly in adult's production differs significantly from native speech in various ways (see Archibald 1998 for a review). While a number of major learning models were developed largely from the phonological and phonetic observations at a segmental-level (i.e., Flege (2003)’s Speech Learning Model, Kuhl (1991)’s Native Language Magnet, Best (2001)’s Perceptual Assimilation Model), a growing body of research on non-native speech shows that acoustically measurable prosodic differences are found between native and non-native speech productions. Prosody bears perceptual significance in that the overall prosodic characteristics of non-native speech contribute to the degree of foreign or non-native accents (see Aoyama and Guion 2007 for a literature review; Mareüil and Vieru-Dimulescu 2006). This lecture presents various acoustic correlates of prosody, such as pitch accent, tone, global pitch range and declination, which were produced in native and non-native Mandarin speech. It also highlights significant differences between native and non-native prosody productions and discusses some factors that may affect the acquisition of non-native prosody, such as native language transfer, meta-linguistic knowledge, speech planning strategy, language proficiency and age.
Bio:
Ok Joo LEE (李玉珠) is an associate professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea. She received her Ph.D. in Chinese Linguistics from The Ohio State University in 2005 (Dissertation: The Prosody of Questions in Beijing Mandarin). She has been working on phonetics and phonology, and her research addresses various topics in the areas of Modern Chinese Phonetics/Phonology, Comparative Linguistics, and Second Language Acquisition. She has actively participated in a number of international conferences on linguistics and has served as an associate editor of Korea Journal of Chinese Language and Literature. Her recent publications include: “Speaking Rate and Global Pitch Trend in Mandarin Chinese” (2014), “Chinese Phonology in Korea: The-State-of-The-Art and Future Perspectives” (2013), “Pitch Cues in L2 Speech” (2013), “Tone 2 Sandhi Revisited” (2013), “L2 Prosody: An Acoustic Analysis of L1 Mandarin Speakers of Korean Tonal Patterns” (2012), “Global Pitch Cues in L1 and L2 Productions of Mandarin Chinese” (2012), “Temporal Cues and Discourse Structure in Mandarin Read Speech” (2012), “Role of Phonological Contexts in the Acquisition of Second Language Intonation: Evidences from Korean Speakers’ Mandarin Chinese” (2011).
