Analysis on the Interference Of Chinese /N/-/L/ Confusion to Japanese /N/-/R/ Discrimination by Chinese JFL Learners

Negative transfer occurs in the discrimination of similar phonemes between L1 and L2. Few works have been done on the confusion of Japanese /n/-/r/ by the Chinese JFL learners whose native dialect has the allophone of /n/-/l/, which is similar to Japanese /r/. Aiming at better understanding of the interference of L1 Mandarin /n/-/l/ on L2 Japanese /n/-/r/, we analyzed the effect of phonetic context and speech rate on the perceptual discrimination by 23 Chinese JFL learners of beginners. Participants identified Chinese /na/-/la/, /ni/-/li/ and Japanese /na/-/ra/ and /ni/-/ri/ in monosyllable words, fast sentences and slow sentences. Results showed that phonetic contexts influenced the discrimination of both L1 /n/-/l/ and L2 /n/-/r/. However, speech rate had little effect on the L1 contrast, while significantly affected the L2 contrast. The results bring more specific insights into the understanding of the interference of L1 allophone to the similar L2 phoneme discrimination.