• Statistical Analysis
• Second Language Acquisition
• Tones
• Mandarin

This thesis inspected the result of perception experiment and acoustic performance made by Italian students when learning Mandarin. Under the detailed analysis, we tend to master the status quo of the tonal pattern of Italian Mandarin learners with different language levels.
The thesis could be generally divided into three parts. In first part, general literature reviews on the history and status quo of experimental study of Mandarin Chinese tones, tonal coarticulation, L2 tonal acquisition, and the bias of tonal acquisition have been elaborated. In second part, we concentrated on introducing the main task, design and methodology of both perception and production experiment. While in third part, statistical analysis of two experiments has been carried out.
In perception part, for monosyllabic and disyllabic tones, the overall trend is that the higher level the subject belongs to, the higher accuracy will be shown. But for disyllabic tones in context, this trend has been broken, that the advanced level manifested worse than intermediate level. In terms of production experiment, for monosyllabic part based on different-group discussion, we could conclude that subjects belong to higher level manifest better than those to lower level. But for disyllabic tones pronounced independently and in sentential circumstance, the situation becomes extremely complex. A unified conclusion could not have been easily achieved as we do in monosyllabic part.