Production of Mandarin affricates by Thai learners: An acoustic study

Abstract

The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) and the Speech Learning Model (SLM) make distinct predictions about how L1–L2 phonological similarity affects second language acquisition. This study evaluates these models through an analysis of Mandarin affricate production by Thai learners. Acoustic measurements showed significant differences between learners and native speakers across all parameters examined. Native speaker transcriptions revealed that while Thai learners successfully produced Mandarin's aspiration contrasts, they exhibited difficulties with place and manner distinctions: For place contrasts, learners frequently substituted alveolar (/ts/) and retroflex (/tʂ/) affricates with alveolopalatal counterparts (/tɕ/), and produced unaspirated retroflex affricates (/tʂ/) as alveolar variants ([ts]); For manner distinctions, aspirated affricates (e.g., /ts^h/, /tʂ^h/, /tɕ^h/) were often misproduced as their homorganic fricatives (/s/, /ʂ/, /tɕ/). While these findings partially support both CAH and SLM, they suggest the need for models to incorporate more detailed phonetic specifications to fully account for L2 production patterns.