Dissertation
Production and Online Processing of Tonal Coarticulation in Standard Chinese: Evidence from L1 Speakers and L2 Learners
On the 8th of July, Hana Nurul Hasanah successfully defended a doctoral thesis. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Hana Nurul on this achievement!
- Author
- Hana Nurul Hasanah
- Date
- 08 July 2026
- Links
- Leiden University Repository
This dissertation aims to extend our understanding of the production and processing of coarticulation from the segmental to the suprasegmental domain by focusing on tonal coarticulation in Standard Chinese (SC) bisyllabic nonce words. Through a detailed acoustic study, it presents evidence that a less-studied second language (L2) learner group in L2 tone research, namely Indonesian learners of SC, can acquire SC bitonal coarticulation patterns to some extent. Their patterns also exhibit a developmental trajectory in the acquisition of tonal coarticulation that differs from that reported for other non-tonal L2 learner groups, such as Dutch learners of SC. These findings offer further insights into existing theories of L2 speech learning, particularly regarding how suprasegmental details at the sub-tonemic, non-contrastive level can be acquired by learners whose L1 lacks direct counterparts. Using two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, this dissertation demonstrates that the perceptual benefit of non-contrastive cues observed in segments also extends to lexical tones, in both anticipatory dissimilation and carryover assimilation. By comparing time-course data from L1 speakers and Indonesian L2 learners of SC, this dissertation sheds light on how contextual F0 realizations of lexical tones are represented and processed depending on the listener’s prior experience with fine-grained tonal cues. Additionally, L1 speakers’ utilization of such tonal cues during speech recognition further suggests that fine-grained coarticulatory information at the suprasegmental level needs to be incorporated in models of speech representation and recognition.