Sound change in the mother tongue and its effect on phonological variation in two learnt language varieties: Evidence from Hong Kong students

Previous studies delineated the loss of syllable-initial /n-/ and the replacement of /n-/ by /l-/ in Cantonese (a Chinese dialect) spoken in Hong Kong (Yeung 1980, Bourgerie 1990; Ho 2004). On the basis of the previous studies, the present study closely examined the effect of the sound change of syllable-initial /n-/ in L1 Cantonese on the phonological variation of this syllable-initial in two language varieties, L2 English and Mandarin (standard spoken Chinese), learnt by Hong Kong students. This study included a total of 72 students from primary school, secondary school and university in Hong Kong. Within Labov’s (1972) and Tarone’s (1983, 1988) theoretical and methodological research framework, this study adopted a quantitative approach to correlate the variables , language proficiency, gender and speech styles with the phonological variable /n-/ observed in Hong Kong students’ Cantonese, English and Mandarin. Six oral tasks in each of the three language varieties were designed for collecting data. These tasks were: free conversation, informal interview, passage reading, word reading, minimal pair reading and minimal repetition. Follow-up interviews were conducted with informants to find out their awareness of, and attitudes toward, the merging of /n-/ with /l-/ in Cantonese, English and Mandarin. The results indicate: (1) The effect of phonological change in L1 Cantonese on the substitution of /n-/ by /l-/ in the two learnt languages is evident; (2) The degrees of phonological awareness varied in different contextual styles play a more important role than language proficiency in the phonological substitution in both English and Mandarin. (3) The frequency of the substitution of /n-/ by /l-/ in English was higher than that in Mandarin. It is suggested that the difference between the two learnt language varieties in the substitution frequency is due to different writing systems of Chinese and English, different learning processes of the two language varieties and learners’ different attitudes towards the two language varieties. This study sheds light on the research of cross-linguistic phonological variations and interlanguage phonology in multilingual communities.