Hong Kong Cantonese university students’ tonal errors in Mandarin and their relation to L1 influence

After the change of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to People’s Republic of China, Mandarin has become increasingly important in Hong Kong society. However, it is observed that many native Cantonese speakers have problems mastering Mandarin tones despite the less complex tonal system. This study attempts to investigate the Mandarin tonal error patterns made by Hong Kong learners and the possible causes for these errors. A reading aloud test and a follow-up interview were designed to collect the data. The findings of the study show that a large number of students were confused about Mandarin tones and found them difficult to master, especially between tone 1 and tone 4 and tone 2 and tone 3. All the participants made these two mistakes in the test. This study hypothesizes that L1 negative transfer is the key factor that helps Cantonese speaking learners’ ability to establish a new tone in the L2. However, the reason for participants’ tonal mistakes is not due to one single cause; instead, the errors are caused by multiple factors, including lack of tonal knowledge, incomplete tonal acquisition, and tonal errors explained by the Speech Learning Model.

自主權移交後，普通話在香港社會的地位變得越來越重要。然而，許多研究均指出，儘管普通話的聲調系統比廣東話簡單，但仍然有許多以廣東話作為母語的香港人對掌握普通話聲調感到困難。因此，本論文旨在系統性地研究香港學生所犯的普通話聲調錯誤及其模式，並試圖分析構成錯誤的成因。為搜集相關研究數據，筆者給二十位受訪學生安排了朗讀測試和在測試後對他們各自進行了跟進訪問。研究結果發現，大部分受訪學生對普通話聲調感到困惑和在學習上遇到困難，而跟研究的假設不同，受訪者所犯的聲調錯誤並非由單一因素導致，而是包含了不同原因，包括：聲調學習的不完整、聲調系統的負遷移等。