The productive acquisition of dental obstruents by Danish learners of Chinese

Standard Chinese has phonemic dental stops and affricates /t t h ts ts h /, while the aspiration of the Danish alveolar stop is manifested as affrication /t s /. This paper tests whether Chinese dental obstruents are particularly problematic to acquire for Danish L1 speakers, as suggested by Wang (2014). It also tests whether Danish /t s /, assumed to be problematic for the acquisition of the corresponding Chinese phoneme, is transferrable to Danish L1 speakers' pronunciation of English. 25 students of Chinese at different levels were asked to utter short sentences in Danish, English, and Chinese. The results unequivocally show that the participants of the experiment transfer affrication to their production of English, and that most Danes learning Chinese have problems with the production of the dental obstruents. The results also show that Danish L2 learners of Chinese pronounced /ts/ as a fricative, which is clearly distinct from Chinese /t h ts h / and that the duration is significantly longer than for L1 speakers of Chinese. The primary distinguishing feature between /t h ts h / appears to vary in learners' perception of duration but not in affrication. Moreover, for most first and second year students, and among half of the participating third year students, affrication is prominent in the production of Chinese phonemes /t h t sh /. To further complicate the picture, the students were also found to gradually develop fortis before they were able to pronounce Chinese /t h /. This paper argues that if their pronunciation is purely aspirated this does not cause problems, but if affrication is retained in their pronunciation it only serves to make their production of /t h ts h / more similar.