Orthographic Influence and Individual Differences in the Perception of Mandarin Tone by L1 English Listeners

This thesis investigates how orthographic design influences the perception and acquisition of Mandarin lexical tone by L1 English learners. Across three papers spanning psycholinguistics, phonology and language pedagogy, it addresses a key gap in second language acquisition research concerning the role of written input in learning suprasegmental features.
While orthographic effects on segmental learning are well documented, their impact on tone perception remains under-explored. Chapter 2 establishes a set of normed pseudo-Mandarin stimuli and examines whether lexical tone contributes to non-word acceptability judgements in L1 Mandarin speakers. Chapter 4 is the primary paper in which L1 English participants were taught one of three transcription systems: pinyin, zhuyin and modpin, a novel system that combines pinyin spelling conventions with right-aligned tone diacritics. Tone discrimination was assessed at the sub-lexical and lexical levels. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 present further analysis into the patterns observed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 investigates the extent to which existing theoretical models can account for the Chapter 4 findings while Chapter 6 models participants’ learning trajectories. Chapter 7 examines the influence of individual differences, including pitch perception, working memory and musical experience, on the learning patterns in Chapter 4.
The findings demonstrate that orthographic design can affect learners’ attention to tonal information, though its impact on perceptual accuracy is limited compared to individual cognitive factors, particularly pitch sensitivity. Repositioning tone diacritics appears to increase noticing but does not consistently translate into improved performance.
This thesis contributes to knowledge in three key areas: methodology, psycholinguistics and pedagogy. Methodologically, it provides a set of normed Mandarin non-words for future work and provides guidance on how methods can be optimised for work in the field. From a psycholinguistic perspective, it sheds light on the nature of L1 and L2 tone perception and explores the factors that modulate it. Pedagogically, it challenges assumptions about the optimality of standard transcription systems and supports more flexible, learner-sensitive approaches to teaching Mandarin tone.