Research - Eric Pelzl

My research interests flow out of my experience as both a learner and teacher of Mandarin Chinese, and a long-term fascination with the complexities of Mandarin speech (tones, homophones, and a complex relationship to orthography). I am interested broadly in how people learn and comprehend language as adults, and how they adapt to unfamiliar sounds, whether in their native language or a new one.

Lexical tone perception

Are tones difficult for second language learners to categorize? What about during word recognition? By examining advanced learners using behavioral and ERP measures across syllable, word, and sentence tasks, we found striking evidence that learners can achieve near-native levels of perception for isolated tones, but nevertheless struggle to use tones to recognize disyllabic words in isolation and in sentences. In follow up work as part of my dissertation, I further investigated these issues using additional behavioral and ERP measures. Results suggest most advanced L2 learners have persistent, but varied difficulties with tones, including low-level perception of tones in context, large gaps in memory for tones, and perhaps a bias against immediate use of tones in real-time word recognition.

Relevant publications

Pelzl, E., Liu, J., Qi, C. (2022) Native language experience with tones influences both phonetic and lexical processes when acquiring a second tonal language. Journal of Phonetics. [author’s version]

Pelzl, E., Lau, E., Guo, T., DeKeyser, R. (2021) Advanced second language learners of Mandarin show persistent deficits for lexical tone encoding in picture-to-word form matching. Frontiers in Communication [open access article]

*L2 learners tend to forget or misremember many tones*

Pelzl, E., Lau, E., Guo, T., DeKeyser, R. (2021) Even in the best-case scenario L2 learners have persistent difficulty perceiving and utilizing tones in Mandarin: Findings from behavioral and ERP experiments. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 43(2), 268-296. [read-only -link]

Pelzl, E., Lau, E., Guo, T., DeKeyser, R. (2019) Advanced second language learners’ perception of lexical tone contrasts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition. 41(1), 59-86. doi:10.1017/S0272263117000444 [read-only link]

Pelzl, E. (2019) What makes perception of Mandarin tones difficult for second language learners? A non-technical review of evidence from psycholinguistic research. Chinese as a Second Language (漢語教學研究—美國中文教師學會學報). 54(1), 51-78. doi: 10.1075/csl.18009.pel [author’s version]

Pelzl, E. (2018) Second language lexical representation and processing of Mandarin Chinese tones. University of Maryland, College Park.

Foreign-accented Mandarin

Learners often get their tones wrong, but does it matter? An interesting characteristic of L2 tone errors it that they are often unpredictable for the listener because the learner simply doesn’t know the right tone. This means a high tone could be produced as rising, low, falling, or something completely un-Mandarin, without any clear pattern. Using ERP and behavioral measures we have explored how segmental and tonal speech errors might be treated differently by Chinese listeners depending on who produced them (native speaker or foreign-accented speaker), and whether the frequency of errors might change how listeners respond to an L2 speaker’s speech.

Relevant publications

Pelzl, E., Carlson, M. T., Guo, T., Jackson, C. N., van Hell, J. G. (2021) Tuning out tone errors? Native listeners do not down-weight tones when hearing unsystematic tone errors in foreign-accented Mandarin. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000280 [a uthor’s version]

Pelzl, E. Lau, E. F., Jackson, S. R.,Guo, T., Gor, K. (2021) Behavioral and neural responses to tone errors in foreign-accented Mandarin. Language Learning. [read-only-link]

Pelzl, E. (2021) Foreign-accent in second language Mandarin Chinese. In C. Yang (Ed.) The acquisition of Chinese as a second language pronunciation: Segments and prosody. Springer. [author’s version]

Work in progress

Pelzl, E., Carlson, M. T., Jackson, C. N., van Hell, J. G. (in prep) Frequent pronunciation errors in foreign-accented speech drive down-weighting of phonological cues.

Chinese character learning (High variability orthographic training)

In the domain of L2 speech perception, decades of research have shown clear benefits for training using the voices of multiple speakers. Such “high variability phonetic training” helps learners determine which features of L2 sounds are essential, and which can be ignored as part of an individual speaker’s unique vocal characteristics. Might similar benefits come from learning Chinese characters using a variety of fonts?

Pelzl, E. (in prep) The influence of variability in typefaces during vocabulary learning

Link to c urrent CV

Other Publications & Presentations

Cook, S. V., Sweet, S. J., Lancaster, A., Pandža, N. B., Jackson, S. R., Pelzl, E., Gor, K., Doughty, C. J. (2018) “Linguistic Correlates of Proficiency (LCP): At the intersection of testing and teaching.” In J. M. Davis, et al. (Ed.), Useful Assessment and Evaluation in Language Education. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press.

Coming soon…

Pelzl, E. (in press) Commentary. In C. Chu, M. Coss, and P. N. Zhang (Ed.) Transforming L2 Hanzi Teaching and Learning in the Age of Digital Writing (电写时代汉字教学的理论与实践), Routledge.

Dickson, D., Pelzl, E. (in press) Using time-based encephalography to investigate second language learning/acquisition. In K. Morgan-Short and J. van Hell (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Neurolinguistics.

Pelzl, E., Zhang, H. (in revision) Tone. In I. Kecskes and Y. Zhao (Ed.) Development and Use of Chinese as a Second Language, Cambridge University Press.

Conference posters and presentations

Pelzl, E., Olmstead, A. J., Viswanathan, N. (2023) Studying Mandarin Tone sandhi in interaction. Poster presented at the 184th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, IL.

Pelzl, E. (2022) High Variability Orthographic Training: Learning Words in a Morphosyllabic Script Through Training with Multiple Fonts. Paper to be presented at 63rd annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, MA.

Pelzl, E., Carlson, M. T., Jackson, C. N., van Hell, J. G. (2021) When a second language speaker produces frequent pronunciation errors, native listeners can learn to treat the mis-produced sounds as less informative. Poster presented at 62nd annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, LA. [link-to-poster]

Liu, Jiang, Pelzl, E. (2021) Negative and Positive Influence of Tones: Vietnamese Speakers’ Perception of Tones and Recognition of (Tone) Words in L2 Mandarin. Paper presented at the 46th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), Boston, MA.

Pelzl, E., Carlson, M. T., Jackson, C. N., van Hell, J. G. (2021) When L2 tone errors are extremely frequent, Mandarin listeners will ignore (some of) them. Paper presented at 33rd North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, Chicago, IL (virtual).

Pelzl, E. (2021, April) The enduring difficulty of tones: Results of tone and word recognition experiments with advanced L2 Chinese learners. Paper presented at Chinese Language Teachers Association Annual Conference (virtual).

Pelzl, E., Lau, E., Guo, T., DeKeyser, R. (2018, October) Suprasegmental difficulties are not superficial: An ERP study of tone word recognition in advanced second language learners of Mandarin Chinese. Paper presented at the thirty-seventh annual Second Language Research Forum, Montreal, Canada.

Pelzl, E. (2018, April) The role of accent in Chinese listeners’ comprehension of second language Mandarin speech. Paper presented at Chinese Language Teachers Association Annual Conference, Herndon, VA.

Pelzl, E. (2018, March) The processing of tones and segments in Mandarin word recognition by advanced second language learners. Poster presented at American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2018 Conference, Chicago, IL.

Pelzl, E. (2016, April) What makes hearing Mandarin tones difficult for second language learners? Evidence from psycholinguistic research. Paper presented at Chinese Language Teachers Association Second International Symposium on Chinese Teaching and Learning (CLTA-S2), College Park, MD.

Pelzl, E., Guo, T., Lau, E. (2016, March) Tuning in: adaptation to mispronunciation in foreign-accented sentence comprehension. Poster presented at the twenty-ninth annual CUNY conference on human sentence processing, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL.

Pelzl, E., DeKeyser, R., Lau, E., Phillips, C. (2015, October). Advanced second language learners’ perception of lexical tone contrasts. Paper presented at the thirty-fourth Second Language Research Forum (SLRF), Atlanta, GA.

Pelzl, E. (2015, October). A proof-of-concept study for measuring receptive written vocabulary size in second language Chinese. Poster presented at the fourteenth annual conference of the East Coast Organization of Language Testers (ECOLT), Georgetown University, Washington D.C.

Pelzl, E., Vafaee, P., Chrabaszcz, A., Cook, S., Gor, K., Jackson, S. R., Jiang, N., Lancaster, A., Li, C., Li, M., Long, M. H., Pandža, N. B., Zhou, Q. (2014, October). Linguistic Correlates of Proficiency. Paper presented at the thirteenth annual conference of the East Coast Organization of Language Testers (ECOLT), New York, NY.

Images adapted from Wikimedia Commons: book, tree