Cantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation of
English Final Consonants
Alice Y.W. Chan
Department of English and Communication, City University of
Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong
This paper discusses Cantonese ESL leamers’ pronunciation of English final singleton
consonants. Twelve learners at the intermediate and advanced levels participated in a
recent research study, which included four different tasks: the reading of a word list of
about 150 words, the description of about 100 pictures, the reading of three passages of
about 250-350 words each, and a conversational interview. Words consisting of all the
English permissible final singleton consonants in different preceding vowel environ-
ments were used for probing into the learners’ interphonology. The participants’ per-
formance in each task was recorded and transcribed independently by two raters.
‘The results of the study showed that the participants had most problems with the
voicing contrasts of final obsttuents. Other problems included the non-release of
final plosives and the inaccurate articulation of certain fricatives and sonorant conso-
nants, especially the lateral /l/, The preceding vowel environments of nasals and
lateral were also found to be significant in determining the learners’ acquisition of
the segments concerned. It is suggested that ESL teachers should be aware of the
sources of their students’ problems as well as the relative gravity of the problems if
they are to help their students overcome the problems effectively.
doi: 10 2167 lec321 0
Keywords: second language acquisition, interphonology, English final singleton
consonants, obstruents, sonorant consonants
Introduction
Itis well known that learners often encounter difficulties in learning a second
language, ranging from the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of the target
language to its morphology and phonology. Studies on learner difficulties
have often focused on the errors that learners make in their acquisition
process, because it is thought that their errors give important evidence that
they are in the process of acquiring the language and indicate their knowledge
of the language (Corder, 1981). Research into second language phonology
acquisition has also attempted to investigate the difficulties or errors that lear~
ners encounter when they produce a second language and /or the strategies that
they use to overcome their difficulties so as to uncover their language learning
process. Various areas of second language phonology acquisition have been
focused on, and learners of different linguistic backgrounds have been
involved. Outside of Hong Kong, Carlisle (1991) investigated the acquisition
of English consonant clusters by 14 Spanish ESL learners in two studies and
found that vowel epenthesis was often used by the learners to overcome
their problems with English onset clusters especially when the onsets occurred
(0790-8318 /06/03 296-18 $20 00/0 1 2006. A YW Chan
LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM Vol 19, No 3, 2005
2%Canionese ESL Leamers’ Pronunciation 297
after consonants. Edge (1991) examined the production of word-final voiced
obstruents in English by Japanese and Cantonese speakers and found that
devoicing was significant for both Japanese and Cantonese learners of
English although Japanese learners approximated target variants more often
Within the context of Hong Kong, Peng and Setter (2000) scrutinised the
reduction of alveolar plosives by two Cantonese speakers. Their study provides
evidence of a systematic morphophonemic alternation in the English of
Cantonese ESL learners, confirming, that this process is a linguistic feature of
the English of Li Cantonese speakers Stibbard (2004) studied the co-occurring
segmental errors made by Cantonese ESL learners using connected speech data
and concluded that Hong Kong English pronunciation should not be viewed as
phonological in its own right. Instead, all the features identified should be
regarded learner errors
Not only have segmental problems been explored in the literature, but supra-
segmental problems have also been the focus of interphonology research
Focuising on single-stressed words, double-stressed words, and unstressed syl-
lables, Aziz (1980) investigated laqis’ problems with English stress patterns
Kim and Kim (2001) looked into the general intonation patterns of Korean
leamers of English speaking English declarative sentences. Results of these
research studies also point to the fact that ESL learners encounter various diffi-
culties in learning the phonetics and phonology of a second language, regard-
less of whether segmental or supra-segmental aspects are at issue
One of the most comprehensive surveys of English pronunciation problems
encountered by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong is probably Chan and
Li (2000), who give a detailed account of the problems these learners encounter
in the production of both isolated English words and English connected
speech. Among the difficulties documented are devoicing of final obstruents
(eg devoicing of /2/ in the word rose), deletion of consonants in consonant clus-
ters (eg. deletion of /r/ in the word produce), and substitution of a non-target
sound for a target sound {eg substitution of [w] for /r/ in the word Fred).
Suprasegmentally, it is argued that English stress and hythm also pose tremen-
dous problems for Cantonese ESI. learners, such that all the syllables in an
English word or phrase are pronounced with equal stress occupying more or
less the same amount of time, thereby resulting in a syllable-timed rhythm.
(For example, the phrase International Airport, which should be pronounced
with the underlined syllables stressed and the rest unstressed, is pronounced
with all the syllables given the same amount of stress ) Though comprehensive
enough, the problems documented are largely based on the authors’ observations
corroborated by a substantial body of earlier findings (Chan & Li, 2000). No
rigorous empirical data was specifically gathered to support their claims
Tn an attempt to provide (partial) empirical data for Chan and Li's (2000)
findings, a research study was carried out by the author of the present paper
to investigate the pronunciation of English final singleton consonants by inter-
mediate and advanced Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. Singleton conso-
nants, rather than consonant clusters, were chosen for experimentation because
the number of fice variables in articulation could be restricted. Final conso-
nants, rather than initial consonants, were chosen because there are significant
differences between the inventory and articulation of permissible final298 Language, Culture and Curriculum
consonants in English and in Cantonese: whereas there are 20 final consonants
in Received Pronunciation (RP) English (all the English RP consonants except
/h, t, j, W/). only six consonants are allowed in syllable-final position in
Cantonese, namely voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ and nasals /m, n, n/ (Chan &
Li, 2000). The articulation of final plosives in English is also different from
that of final plosives in Cantonese. Whereas English final plosives are normally
released, final plosives in Cantonese are obligatorily unreleased. This means
that for the voiceless bilabial /p/, the lips remain closed; for the voiceless alveolar
/t/, the tongue tip clings to the alveolar sidge; and for the voiceless velar /k/, the
back of the tongue touches the velum and remains there without air being
released (Chan & Li, 2000). Such differences in the inventory and articulation
of permissible final consonants in the two languages are illuminating and may
have an effect on Cantonese learners’ acquisition of English pronunciation.
Methodology
An intensive research study was conducted with six F. 4 and F.5 secondary
school students (including five form 4 students and one form 5 students) and
six year 1 and year 2 university students (including one year 1 student and
five year 2 students in Hong Kong? They have been learning English as a
second language since they were four or five The university students were
all English majors and had taken a course of English phonetics and phonology
lasting for 13 weeks) in their first year of university study. The secondary
students, on the other hand, had not received any phonetics training before
A control group comprising three native speakers of English was also invited
to participate in the study to provide baseline data. The participants (and the
Native English speakers (NEs)) were asked to perform four different tasks,
which included (1) the reading of a word list of about 150 words, (2) the
description of about 100 pictures depicting different objects, actions o1
scenes, (3) the reading of three passages of about 250-350 words each, and
(4) a conversational interview of about 10-15 minutes Words consisting of
all the English permissible final singleton consonants in different preceding
vowel environments were used for probing into the learners’ interlanguage
phonology. In order to facilitate the proceedings of the reading tasks, only
simple mono- or bi-syllabic words containing the target sounds were included
For the word-reading task, the participants were asked to read the list of iso-
lated words one by one. For the picture description task, the participants
were asked to produce a particular word which was appropriate fo the
content of each of the pictures. Cues eliciting the appropriate response were
given where necessary. For the passage reading task, the texts were selected
specifically for the study to elicit words with the final consonants under inves-
tigation For the conversational interview task, each subject was interviewed
individually for the elicitation of spontaneous speech. He/she was given
some topics of personal experience, such as their hobbies, their friends and
family, or their pets, and asked to select one topic for a 15-minute discussion
The participants’ performance in each task was recorded using a high-quality
mini-disk recorder: To ensure reliability, the researcher adopted both inter-rater
and intra-rater judgments. The recordings were manually transcribed by twoCantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 299
transcribers, who had received formal training in linguistics and phonetics and
who attended a series of coaching sessions conducted by the researcher to
ensure accuracy and consistency. Their results were compared and the discre-
pancies in their judgement were resolved.
RP was taken as the norm in the accuracy judgment process as this accent is
the one most widely taught in local schools. All the documented features rel-
evant to the accurate articulation of the target sounds, including the manner
of articulation, the place of articulation, and the state of the glottis (ie. voiced
or voiceless) (cf Roach, 2000), were taken into account, but the participants’
performance in irrelevant areas, such as their pronunciation of the vowels
which preceded the target consonants or their pronunciation of initial conso-
nants, were ignored. Although two groups of leamers at two different profi-
ciency levels were included, no attempt was made to compare and contrast
their performance The inclusion of two different groups of learners for the
study was decided on in the hope of yielding results which would be
deemed more representative of the spoken output of Cantonese ESL learners
in Hong Kong.
Findings and Discussion
The results of the study revealed that the participants showed different
performance on different categories of sounds Following Chomsky and
Halle’s (1968) distinctive features system, the consonant sounds under investi-
gation have been classified into obstruents and sonorant consonants. Because
ail English sonorant consonants are voiced in final position, but English obstru-
ents can be voiced or voiceless, the following discussion will broadly be
divided into voiced obstruents (ie. /b, d, g, v, z, 3, 9, d3/), voiceless obstruents
(ie /p, tk, £8, J, 8 tf/) and sonorant consonants (/1, m, n, n/). The subcate-
gories (e.g, plosives vs fricatives and afiricates; lateral vs nasals) within each
category Will also be examined independently where appropriate, Given that
the research was an intensive study of the speech behaviow of a selected
group of learners rather than a cross-sectional study of a large group of parti
pants, the results will be discussed with reference to the tokens of sounds pro-
duced rather than to the sample of participants involved
Voiced obstruents
‘The most serious problem that the participants encountered in their pronun-
ciation of English final singleton consonants was the voicing contrasts of voiced
obstitents, especially fricatives and affricate. Virtually no participant in the
study pronounced any of the voiced obstruents with voicing irrespective of
speech styles and the preceding vowel environments that the segments were
in: a tolal of only about 0.1% of the voiced obstruents cued or attempted
(3658 tokens) were voiced (see Table 1) If speech styles were taken into
account, the results were no different: 0.2% and 0.5% of the total number of
voiced obstruents cued in the picture description task (204 tokens) and word
reading task (528 tokens) were voiced, and 0% of the total number of voiced
obstruents in the passage reading task (1335 tokens) and interview task (1591
tokens) were voiced. This difference was minimal and did not reveal any300 Language, Culture and Curriculum
Table 1 The participants’ overall performance on the different categories of sounds
Categories/sub-categories | Total number of tokens | Percentages of correct
cued or attempted tokens produced
Voiced abstiuents 3658 tokens O1%
Voiced plosives: 7133 tokens - |
Voiced fricatives 2367 tokens
Voiced affricate 158 tokens
Voiceless obstruents| 4645 tokens
Veiceless plosives 2914 tokens
Voiceless fricatives 1421 tokens | 939%
Voiceless affiicate 310 tokens | 987%
[Sonorant consonants (6036 tokens 78.2%
Lateral 1153 tokens 98%
Nasals 4903 tokens 942% |
significant difference between the par ticipants’ performance in different speech
tasks (see Table 2 for a detailed analysis of individuals’ performance on frica-
tives and affricate)
‘As is documented in the literature, devoicing of final obstruents is a very
common phenomenon encountered by many ESL learners whose native
language does not show voicing contrasts (e.g. Eckman, 1981; Edge, 1991;
Major & Faudree, 1996) (see also the Terminal Devoicing Rule, in Eckman,
1981) The same phenomenon was found in the interlanguages of my par
pants, whose mother tongue is Cantonese, a language which does not have
voiced obstruents in its phonemic inventory
Ithas been observed that even native speakers do not voice final obstruents
occasionally. Instead of actualising the voicing contrast between, for example,
/p/ and /b/, in words such as rope /raup/ and robe /ravb/, native speakers
of English often shorten the preceding vowel in rope, distinguishing the two
words by means of vowel length rather than final voicing Devoicing of final
voiced obstruents was also found among the control group of the present
stuidy, but to much lesser extent than the Cantonese participants. Only a
total of about 22% of final voiced obstruents were devoiced, and in consonance
With previous observations, devoicing was typically accompanied by a
lengthening of the preceding vowel This compensation strategy was,
however, not found in this study sample of Cantonese ESL learners. Because
devoicing alone without a corresponding change in the vowel length was pre-
dominantly used for coping with final voiced obstruents, these voiced conso-
nants (such as the fricatives /v, z, 0, 3/ and the affricate /d3/) became
indistinguishable from their voiceless counterparts. The participants’ inability
to actualise the systematic contrast between voiced and voiceless obstruents,
thus, resulted in their use of a substitution strategy, replacing a difficult
sound with its corresponding ‘easier’, voiceless counterpart (Chan & Li, 2000)
The participants’ production of voiced plosives was more complicated. Most
final plosives were not released (see section ‘Voiceless Obstruents' below), soCantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation
301
Table 2 Percentages of devoicing of final fricatives and affricate by the participants
Word list | Picture list | Passages | Conversation | Total
(%) (%) (%) Co) (i)
Devoicing of final voiced fricatives
SI [_100 100 100 100 100
saith 100 100 100 __100 100
3 100 100 100 100 100
s 100 100 100 100 100
5 100 100 100 100 100
36 100 100 100 100
cae 100 io | 989 992
38 100 00 | 100 100
9 100 100 100 100
S10 100 100 100 100
sm 067 100 100 4
siz 100 100 100 100
‘Average 72 100 998 99
Devoicing of final voiced affricate
100 100 No data No data 100
100 100 No data 100 100
100 100 | _Nodata No data 100
100 100 No data No data 100
100 100 No data 100 100
100 100 Nodata_| _Nodata 100
100 100 No data 100 100
[100 100 | _Nodata 100 100
100 100 No data 100 300
it 100 No data 100 a7
100 100 Nodata | 100 100
100 100 No data 100 100
“991 | 100 No data 100 94
ing, Was not a predominant feature, yet for those consonants which were
indeed released, practically all the instances, except 0 1%, were devoiced (see
Table 1)
Voiceless obstruents
Without the voicing requirement, voiceless obstruents did not pose as much
difficulty for the participants in the study as voiced obstruents, resulting in an
overall accuracy rate of about 72%. The participants’ performance on this302 Language, Culture and Curriculum
category of sound was, however, not consistent when the different sub-
categories ~ plosives vs fricatives and affricate ~ were taken into account
Plosives
The participants’ performance on (voiceless) plosives was significantly
poorer than their performance on (voiceless) fricatives and affricate. Only
about 53.5% of the total number of final voiceless plosives cued or attempted
Q914 tokens) were produced without modifications (see Table 1), and the
major modification made was non-1elease. Non-1elease of word-final voiceless
plosives was most serious for the conversation task, but the majority of partici-
pants also exhibited such a feature in their production of voiceless plosives in
other formal tasks such as word list reading and picture list reading (see
Table 3)
‘Asstated in Gimson and Ramsaran (1989), the production of English plosives
is characterised by three phases: the closing phase when the articulators move
together to form an obstiuction, the old phase when air is compressed, and
the release phase when the articulators move apart to allow air to escape. All
these phases are obligatory when a plosive is in initial position Final singleton
plosives in words in isolation are also normally released? On the other hand,
Cantonese final plosives are obligatorily unreleased (Chan & Li, 2000). This
articulatory difference between the plosives of the two languages may help
explain the participants’ performance: they may have tansferred their usual
habit of not releasing final plosives to their pronunciation of English plosives,
resulting in a low accuracy rate
Non-release of final plosives was also common among the control group, but
typically limited to the passage reading task and the interview task. Unlike the
Table 3 Percentages of non-release of voiceless plosives produced by the participants
Percentages of non-release of voiceless plosives
Word list | Picture list | Passages | Conversation | Total
(|) CH) () (%)
207 370 447 660 529
310 a4 18 25 805
38 333 600 529 478
207 592 671 839 oi
207 296 588 892 638
72 | 2359 2A 536 356
mai | 48a 706 "847 682
00 37 Re 5 462
103 | 00 at 495 276
oo | 00 424 625 425
207 74 oi2 | 703 571
2a 481 553 S77 523
170 281 529 O97 535.Cantonese ESL Leamers' Pronunciation 303
Cantonese patticipants, non-release of final plosives in isolated words in the
word list and picture list reading tasks was relatively rarer for the NEs. Only
about 9% of the word-final voiceless plosives in these two tasks were
unreleased.
Fri
catives and affricate
Unlike voiceless plosives, voiceless fricatives and affricate as a whole were
not found to be very difficult for the participants of the study. About 93.9%
of the total number of voiceless fricatives cued or attempted (1421 tokens)
and about 987% of the total number of voiceless affricates cued or attempted
(310 tokens) were correctly produced by the participants (see Table 1 for a
general picture and Table 4 for the performance of individual participants on
different tasks). The only exception was the dental fricative /9/: Only about
14.2% of the total number of tokens cued or attempted (273 tokens) were accu-
rately pronounced Most of the incorrect pronunciations were substitution by
[f1, so words such as smooth or clash were often mispronounced as [smu] or
[kof]. Contrary to what is documented in the literature (e.g. Chan & Li, 2000;
Lee, 1976), /J/ and /t{/, which are non-existent in Cantonese, did not pose
much difficulty for the participants of the present study. The accuracy rates
were 95 4% and 97 7% respectively, which paralleled the results of other voice-
less fricatives that are often regarded as ‘easy’, namely /s/ and /t/.
The dental fricative /0/ seems to be the most difficult voiceless fricative for
Cantonese learners of English. Although it has been claimed that the sound
is difficult to pronounce only when it is in a consonant cluster (Gimson &
Ramsaran, 1989), our research results showed that the sound was difficult to
the participants even when it was the only consonant in the syllable coda
Because the sound is non-existent in Cantonese (and is actually rarely found
in the world’s languages (Maddieson, 1984), a lack of similar equivalents in
the learners’ mother tongue or their linguistic repertoire may have been the
major cause of the problem. This is not the whole pictuse, though, given that
{J/ and /t{/ are also non-existent in the Cantonese phonemic inventory but
they were not found to be very difficult for the participants. Another possible
reason for the incomparable high inaccuracy rate for /9/, thus, may be the
small articulatory and perceptual differences between the sound and its most
popular’ substitute /f/: both /f/ and /8/ are voiceless fricatives, the former
being labio-dental and the latter being dental. For non-native English speakers
such as Cantonese, the visual distinction between the two places of articulation
is not easily observable. The perceptual difference between the two sounds is
not easily clistinguishable by ear either, given that these learners often work
through the phonological filter of their first language which does not have
such a distinction. Although no documented evidence for Cantonese ESL lear-
ners’ perceived differences between /£/ and /0/ could be presented, the author,
who has been a university English teacher for over 14 years, has received numer-
ous complaints from her students about their difficulties in distinguishing
the two sounds perceptually. The small perceived differences between the
two sounds may help to expiain why /0/ was the most difficult English voice-
less fricative for the participants of the present study.304 Language, Culture and Curriculum
Table 4 Percentages of modifications made to voiceless affricate anc| fricatives by the
participants
Word list | Picture list | Passages | Conversation | Total |
() ca) (%) %) (%)
Percentages of modifications made to voiceless affricate
SL 00 00 286 20 30
00 00 “00 31 34
8 00 00 00 00 00
st 00 00 00 00 00
$5 oo | 00 oo oo oo
$6 00 00 00 00 00 |
00 oo {| 00 “00 00
38 00 00 00 oo 00
9 00 167 00 00 38
S10 oo oo | 00 00 00
Sil 0 00 00 00 00
512 00 00 00 00 00
Average 00 i [| 24 i iB
Percentages of modifications made to voiceless fricatives 7
1 56 oo | 00 “a 14
2 oo 00 00 00 00
3 00 a 68 00 8
st 00 oo 00 00 00
$5 56 oo | 00 00
86 M1 ODEs | eee ee Pree? 279
7 [90 00 23 86 37
$8 56 91 24 15 29
39 56 182 8 ns 7
S10 _56 oo | ag _00 58
sii “22 oo | 47 86 85
S12 56 182 23 32 u
Average 56 a5 34 93 a
It may be argued that the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative /{/ is also articu-
latorily very similar to its closest ‘neighbour’, the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/,
with only slight differences in the place of articulation. This is not true, because
there exists a clearly-observable visual distinction between the articulation of
/{/ and that of /s/, namely the rounding of lips for the former. Such a visual
distinction does not exist for /8/ and /f/. Although lip shape may be heavily
influenced by the phonological environment (such as neighbouring, vowels),
for non-native speakers of English whose first language does not contain /{/,
the visual distinction between the fwo consonants may serve as a useful aid‘Cantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 305
fot acquisition. The perceptual difference between /{/ and /s/ also seems to be
greater than that between /f/ and /8/. Without careful research into Cantonese
ESL learners’ perception of English pronunciation, it is hard to discern the
effects of perception on production, yet the above speculations may plausibly
explain the unexpected results (unexpected because /[/ and /tj/ were not
found to be difficult) of the study.
Sonorant consonants
The participants’ performance on the category of sonorant consonants was
interesting, in the sense that some sonorant consonants (eg. the lateral /I/)
were found to be significantly more difficult than others (eg. nasals):
whereas the lateral /1/ was the most difficult English final consonant next to
voiced obstruents, nasals were the easiest group of English final consonants
Lateral
As is well known, in RP English there exist at least two allophones for the
English lateral /1/, clear [I] before vowels and dark [1] after vowels. According
to Abercrombie (1967), the articulation of clear I] requires a secondary articu-
lation of the raising of the front of the tongue in addition to the primary articu-
lation that is characteristic of an alveolar lateral. The articulation of dark [#], on
the other han, requires a secondary articulation of the raising of the back of the
tongue in addition to the primary articulation. Given that the focus of the
present stucly was on final consonants, the target pronunciation for the laterals,
cued was dark [1]. The resulls of the present study showed that only 9.8% of the
total number of tokens of /1/ cued or attempted in the four tasks (1153 tokens)
were accurately pronounced by the participants in the study (see Figure 1 and
Table 5) Their performance was, however, not uniform. A detailed environ-
mental analysis revealed that a preceding round, back vowel (e.g. /u:/ as in
cool, />:/ as in tall) or a diphthong ending with a round, back vowel (eg
/ou/ as in whole) triggered the least number of accurate articulations and a pre-
ceding close, front vowel (e.g, /t/ asin kill) triggered the most number of accu-
rate articulations (see Figure 1) The most common strategies that they used to
tackle words containing this problematic sound were either total omission of
the sound or vocalisation (substitution by [u) Total omission was typically
found in words consisting of a round, back vowel (the context where dark (4]
‘was least accurately produced), whereas vocalisation was typically found in
other contexts, including a preceding close, front vowel (the context where
the sound was most accurately produced).
Although both Cantonese and English have an alveolar lateral /l/, the distri-
bution of the consonant in the two languages differs: /1/ is found only in initial
position in Cantonese but in both initial and final positions in English, e.g
low /lou/ and dull /dal/ As mentioned earlier, correct articulation of dark [#]
requires a secondary articulation of the raising of the back of the tongue concur-
rently with the primary articulation of the tip of the tongue touching the alveolar
ridge and air escaping through the sides of the tongue (Abercrombie, 1967;
Gimson & Ramsaran, 1989). This articulatory characteristic may explain why
the participants’ production of the sound was the worst in the contexts of a pre-
ceding round, back vowel such as /u:/ or /2:/: Because the secondary articulation306 Language, Culture and Curriculum
Ja
15.9%
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tov
fev
lo:!
ssomoeiioa Jo safiauaaiad
g
g
z
=f
e to
s 23
2g
EE
& §
owe g
a BS
g
(Ree st
3 3 g
& peeeeeeeeeUEREUEUIIEE
S RRR RRNA 3S Eg
“ g
5 RRR
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2 ag
S REET g
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aCantonese ESL Leamers’ Pronunciation 307
Table 5 Percentages of modifications made to the different sonorant consonants by the
participants
Percentages of morifications made to sonorant consonants
T%) i (%) 1%) 9%)
Si 983 00 104
2 970 00 135
33 1000 10 120 125
st 978 102 96 130
55 938 10 13,
56 101 1000 91
7 1000 00 87
$8 08 oust 19
9 933 10 59 38
510 593 00 17 00
si 966 a4 34 a
siz m7, a7 4
Average 902 64 85
addls ‘a vowel-like timbre to the consonant’ (Brown, 1989), the co-existence of
the consonant and a preceding round, back vowel may have been regarded by
the participants as equivalent (see ‘Equivalence Classification’ in Flege, 1987)
(both the vocalic element and the consonantal element requiring the raising of
the back of the tongue) and produced as if they were one single sound with the
dark [4] absorbed by the vowel, resulting in total omission of the consonant.
‘The dissimilarity between dark [}] and a preceding close, front vowel such as
/;/, on the other hand, may have triggered more careful articulation of the con-
sonantal element The higher accuracy rate notwithstanding, it is evident from
my results that the secondary articulation of dark [#] may have been perceived
by the participants as equivalent to an [ul] sound, giving rise toa widespread sub-
stitution by {u]. What made dark [H] difficult to the participants was, thus, the co-
aticulation requirement of the raising of the back of the tongue coupled with
alveolar contact and lateral release, rather than the secondary articulation
alone, which was apparently achieved by the production of [u]*
Nasals
Unlike their performance on /1/, the participants’ performance on nasals was
good on the whole, with an accuracy rate of 94.2% (see Table 1) (ranging from
the lowest accuracy rate of 91.5% for /g/ to the highest of 97.6% for /m/). The
preceding vowel environments of nasals also seemed to have played a part in
the participants’ acquisition of the sounds: a central vowel (e.g. /3:/) triggered
the least number of accurate productions for /m/, a preceding diphthong (e g
jor/, [ar/) triggered the least number of accurate productions for /n/, and a
front vowel (eg, /:e/) triggered the least number of accurate productions for
/n/ (see Figure 2°) In most other contexts, the participants’ performance was308 Language, Culture and Curriculum
& &
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2
a z
8
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betetece
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ee
ce
3 8
oe
- E
g
2 &
Bg
a.
= g
5,
y
é
ssaunaion oso aing ao
3
2
&Cantonese ESL Learners’ Pronunciation 309
close to 100% accuracy. The core problem involved was deletion of the sounds,
and for the case of /n/, deletion and/or substitution by (n]
Cantonese learners’ tendency to delete a final /n/ after diphthongs has been
documented in the literature (Bolton & Kwok, 1990; Chan & Li, 2000). This
deletion phenomenon can again be attributed to mother tongue interference,
because none of the Cantonese final nasals /m, n, n/ can be preceded by
diphthongs (Bauer & Benedict, 1997; Chan & Li, 2000). In encountering
English words like line with a diphthong preceding a final nasal, Cantonese
speakers may have the tendency to delete the nasal as if the word had an
open syllable like the canonical syllable structure that Cantonese diphthongs
are allowed in. It is, however, unclear to the author why the same phenomenon
of deletion did not occur so frequently when /n/ was preceded by other
diphthongs such as /au/, nor was deletion found to be widespread when the
nasal /m/ was preceded by a diphthong. The influence of the preceding
vocalic element seemed to be rather idiosyncratic Further research is thus
needed to uncover the effects of preceding vowel environments on learners’
acquisition of final nasals® (see Table 5 for a detailed analysis of the partici
pants’ performance on nasals)
Implications for Language Teachers
As can be seen from the above discussions, native language interference is
definitely one of the determining factors affecting Cantonese ESL learners’ pro-
duction of English final consonants The devoicing of voiced obstruents, the
non-release of final plosives, and the deletion of /n/ after a diphthong can all
be attributed to mother tongue influence Other factors, such as the effects of
preceding vowel environments on final nasals and the similarity between a
replacement sound and the target sound (as for the case of /1/) may also play a
significant role
It may be argued that some of the problems discussed in this article are not
categorically non-standard, given that native speakers of English, RP speakers
inclusive, do not voice final obstruents, do not audibly release final plosives, or
voealise /1/ occasionally (especially in casual speech). However, these speaking
habits should not be overlooked in the ESL learning arena. Because a lot of ESL.
learners consistently do NOT speak in conformity with the native norm despite
their strong desire to speak ‘good’ English, we can safely conclude that the pro-
blems discussed in this article are the results of their incompetence in produ-
cing accurate English pronunciations rather than their occasional slips of the
tongue or their deliberate attempts to imitate native speaking habits
The acceptability of an ESL learner's pronunciation is dependent, to a large
extent, on the speech styles he/she is engaged in and on the receptiveness of the
listener What might be acceptable in an informal, casual conversational style
may not be acceptable in a formal, careful reading style In contexts where com-
munication of ideas is emphasised and/or where meanings can be inferred
without the need for correct pronunciations, such as in casual conversations,
phenomena such as non-release of final plosives ot devoicing of final abstru-
ents will not normally be regarded as distracting or annoying On the other
hand, in contexts where language accuracy is considered essential (eg. the310 Language, Culture and Curriculum
careful reaciing ofa formal text) or when correct pronunciations are needed for the
differentiation of words (eg, minimal pairs), the same non-native accent will be
deemed unacceptable and affect the listener’s understanding as well as his or
her impression of the speaker's English proficiency. Vocalisation of final /I/ is a
good example. When used in conjunction with other features of the Cantonese
accent, an {ul-like final lateral can sound unsophisticated and may be gravely
stigmatised In view of the possible adverse effects of faulty pronunciation, it is
important that students be made aware of the need for correct pronunciation to
improve language accuracy and to avoid confusion. ESL teachers should
determine the relative degree of gravity of their students’ pronunciation problems
and design appropriate materials for remedial instruction. Mispronunciations
which may cause communication breakdown should of course be given prior
attention, but those which definitely show the learners’ inadequate mastery of
the norm or which clearly demonsirate non-nativeness, irrespective of thei
possible effects on communication, should also be skilfully tackled
Limitations
Despite some insightful findings, the present study suffers from certain limit-
ations. One limitation concerns the sample size. Given that the research was an
intensive study of participants’ speech behaviour in different speech contexts,
only six secondary students and six university students were involved. Such a
small number of participants may not be representative enough to warrant any
reliable conclusions regarding Cantonese ESL learners’ acquisition of English
final singleton consonants, yet the large pool of data collected (3658 tokens of
voiced obstruents, 4645 tokens of voiceless obstruents, and 6056 tokens of
sonorant consonants) may help mitigate the small sample size. The consistency
of the findings with those obtained from previous relevant studies (e.g. Bolton
& Kwok, 1990; Chan & Li, 2000) also shows that the small number of partici-
pants is immaterial to the validity of the results
Another limitation concerns the scope of the study Only one aspect of pho-
nological learning, namely the learning of English final singleton consonants,
was focused on, so no comprehensive conchusions regarding second language
phonology acquisition by Cantonese ESL learners could be drawn Given that
English allows a maximum of three consonants in initial position and four con-
sonants in final position but no consonant clusters are allowed in Cantonese,
Cantonese learners’ acquisition of English consonant clusters is also worth
examining, It is unknown from the results of the study whether, say, the co-
existence of fricatives and plosives, or the co-existence of nasals and fricatives,
trigger similar problems for Cantonese ESL learners as final singleton conso-
nants. Other areas which deserve investigations include learners’ learning of
vowels ~ monophthongs and diphthongs, and suprasegmentals. Further inves-
tigations are needed to obtain a full picture of the English pronunciation
problems encountered by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong,
Conclusion
In this paper, have reported on the results of a research study which inves-
ligated the acquisition of English final singleton consonants by 12 CantoneseCantonese ESL Leainers’ Pronunciation aul
ESL learners in Hong Kong The results of the study are mostly in harmony
with earlier claims about Cantonese ESL learners’ pronunciation problems,
and they have both theoretical and pedagogical implications. On the theoretical
side, they not only provide new empirical support for earlier claims about
English pronunciation problems encountered by Hong Kong Cantonese
speakers (e.g. Chan & Li, 2000), but also put forward an argument that the
preceding vowel environment of a segment may be a determining factor for
the pronunciation of English final singleton consonants, especially of lateral
and nasals. The determining role of mother tongue interference is also verified
On the pedagogical side, the findings provide ESL teachers with insights into
the goal and priority of pronunciation teaching, With a heightened awareness
of the sources of students’ pronunciation difficulties and the nature of the pro-
biems, ESL teachers can design remedial materials that are suitable for their
students’ needs. Given that not all English final consonants are equally difficult
for Cantonese ESL learners or equally distracting for listeners, teachers can set
up a system of teaching priorities based on the relative gravity of the problems
and schedule remedial teaching accordingly.
As the scope of the study was only on Cantonese leamers’ acquisition of
English final singleton consonants, a number of problematic areas in
Cantonese ESL learners’ acquisition of English pronunciation have not been
addressed. Further research is needed to investigate their learning of other seg-
mental and suprasegmental aspects, to ascertain the effects of preceding vowel
environments, and fo uncover the strategies that they use to overcome other
pronunciation problems In view of the possible effects that perception may
have on production, learners’ perceptual abilities, as well as the relationship
between their perceptual abilities and production abilities, are also worth
investigating. Given the small number of participants, there is no attempt on
the author’s part to claim comprehensiveness or generalisability. Instead, it is
hoped that the findings will shed light on the relative gravity of learner diffi
culty and inform ESL teachers of the goals of pronunciation teaching.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the participants who participated in this study, as well
as my research assistants, Jim Lo, Hang Chan and Carmen Kong, for their
administrative assistance. This study was supported by City University of
Hong Kong (Strategic Research Grant No. 7001320) The support of the univer-
sity is acknowledged
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Alice Y W. Chan, Department of
English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue,
Kowloon, Hong Kong (enalice@cityu.edu hk)
Notes
1 The liquil /1/ is not allowed word-finally in RP English except for linking purposes,
but it is allowed in some other accents of English, such as American English and
Scottish English312 Language, Culture and Curriculum
2 F 4 students in Hong Kong are comparable to grade 10 students in the US, and F 5
students to giade I1 students
3 Ina consonant cluster, some plosives may not be audibly released eg In the word
scripls /sktipts/, the /t/ may not be audibly released
4. Hung (2000), using spectrograph analysis, found that a velar glide [w] was used by
his participants to replace dark [4] Because {u} rather than {w} was perceived by the
transcribers in their analysis of the data of the present study (using aural discrimi-
nation by ear), it was decided that the former be opted for Given that the articula-
tion of [3] is very similar to [u] (Roach, 2000), the divergent analysis will not affect
the reliability of my results (see also Bolton & Kwok (1990) for their analysis of sub-
stitution for datk [1))
5. There were some gaps in the inventory of target words included in the present study,
in that a certain preceding vowel environment (eg /o1/) was not associated with a
cettain nasal (eg /m/) Thus, no results on the patticipants’ performance on
those vowel + nasal combinations are shown in Figure 2
6 Environmental analyses of obstruents (plosives, fricatives and affricates) revealed
that the effects of preceding vowel environments were not significant enough to
warrant discussion They were deliberately left out in this paper
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