The markedness differential hypothesis and the acquisition of English final consonants by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong

Abstract

This study sets out to test the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) with regard to the acquisition of English word-final consonants by Cantonese learners of English as a second language (ESL) in Hong Kong. English consonant clusters and singleton consonants among which markedness relationships exist were chosen as the focus. Ten Cantonese learners of English at the intermediate and upper-intermediate levels participated in the study. They were asked to perform three different tasks: The reading of a word list, the description of pictures, and the reading of sentences in the form of grammaticality judgement. The participants’ speech performance was recorded by a high-quality mp3 recorder and transcribed by the researcher. The results largely contradict the predictions of the MDH. Of the three predictions of the MDH with reference to three implicational universals involving final consonant clusters and singleton consonants, two of them are not supported. Some relatively unmarked structures (e.g., /-ts/) were found to cause much difficulty for the participants and relatively marked structures (e.g., /-fs/) were not necessarily difficult. It is argued that the MDH is not adequate in explaining the acquisition of English word-final consonants by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. Factors other than markedness, such as the visual salience of consonants and native language phonotactics, may play a more decisive role in determining the difficulty of sound segments. As individual members of a sound category were found to have different levels of difficulty, the results also question the adoption of implicational universals by the MDH to predict difficulty across sound categories. In terms of pedagogy, language teachers are advised to pay attention to the effects of factors other than markedness in their pronunciation instruction since sound segment difficulty can be determined by them.