1. Voice Onset Time In Chinese Learners of English Major Sharpe

2. Introduction: Research Area Contrastive phonology Language acquisition Processes related to bilingualism Voice onset time (VOT):

3. Aim/Justification The VOT of English stops depends on voicing Chinese ESL speakers must learn to produce voiced stops because Mandarin lacks them Their intelligibility when producing voiced stops depends on VOT This topic should be addressed when teaching Chinese ESL speakers intelligibility

4. References Research Basis: Thornburgh, Dianne F. 1998. Voice Onset Time in Spanish-English Bilinguals: Early Versus Late Learners of English. Journal of Communicative Disorders 31, 215–229. Supporting Articles: Mandarin VOT, changes in Mandarin VOT depending on tone/aspiration, English VOT

5. Research Questions Do Mandarin speakers accurately produce English VOT? Do Mandarin unaspirated stops have the same VOT as English voiceless stops, and if so, is that the sound Mandarin speakers produce when speaking English? Is their English VOT reflected by proper/improper intonation?

6. Methodology Sources Spontaneous speech samples given by OPIE students I will collect myself ~10 examples from students who learned English before age 12 (à la my primary source) and ~10 from students who learned English after age 12 For English speech samples, I will use the Santa Barbara Corpus of American English

7. Subjects About 20 Chinese OPIE students at the intermediate level (AE 50) 1/2 will have learned English before age 12 1/2 will have learned English after age 12

8. Procedure Build a corpus of 20 10-to-15-minute spontaneous speech samples. Ideally, what the subjects say will not be directly controlled or manipulated Transcribe corpus Use software to create waveforms and determine VOT of various stops

9. Anticipated Problems/Limitations of the Study Intermediate Chinese speakers have not yet mastered the rules of English aspiration; potentially, there may not be much data for aspirated English consonants 20 intermediate students may be a gross exaggeration (and definitely a gross amount!) Will spontaneous speech give me all the data I need?

10. Expected Findings A part of the process of learning voiced English stops was implicitly learning VOT rules Those who learned English before 12 know English VOT rules better