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The Chinese pronunciation of English : a preliminary investigation
Author
Chen, Nan
Supervisor
Tan, Ludwig
Abstract
Acquiring a near-native pronunciation is a challenge faced by all foreign language learners without an authentic language-learning environment. Recently, a plethora of research has been conducted to study the acoustic characteristic of non-native varieties of English. A number of findings have emerged over the years with respect to pronunciation features which lead one to perceive speech as being ‘non-native’. It is found, however, the range of data investigated in the Chinese varieties of English has been rather restricted, and the emphasis has mostly been on Chinese learners’ pronunciation errors and difficulties. Besides, these studies have rarely focused on natural speech of EFL learners who have learned English as a subject at school and universities in the Chinese context.
The present research is a preliminary attempt to further the understanding of the Chinese varieties of English, specifically, the pronunciation of English by Standard Chinese (SC) speakers of English. It examines the detectable differences from nativespeaker norms of the speech production patterns of six SC speakers of English through three elicitation tasks. By exploring segmental and prosodic divergences from the phonetic norms of English that have been proposed in the literature as cueing the foreign accent, the present study investigates the principal research question: What are the core pronunciation features of Chinese English that serve to identify it as distinctive from the native variety?
The results show that in terms of vowel quality, despite a lack of distinctive vowel pairs (long vs. short vowels) compared with the RP speaker, SC speakers spread their vowels over a larger portion of the acoustical vowel space, which might be a result of the much larger number of distinct vowel allophones in SC. Besides, four pervasive and unique features of Chinese English related to vowels were also identified: rhotacized vowels, extra final vowel, monophthongisation of the diphthong and lack of reduced vowels. Additionally, it was found that the pronunciation of English by SC speakers could be identified reliably by the use of long closures before the release of stop consonants at the end of word utterances.
At the suprasegmental level, there was no compelling evidence to show that Chinese English was syllable-based even though more stresses were employed by SC speakers than native speakers. However, it was observed in both read and casual speech that SC speakers had a tendency to end all the sentences with a clear falling intonation. As a result, SC speakers had a much sharper F0 pitch fall at the end of an utterance compared with native speakers.
In the concluding chapter, this study explores pedagogical implications and discusses avenues for future research, most importantly how to provide a more rigorous analysis of Chinese varieties of English to facilitate mass learning and promote understanding and the status of Chinese English as the world witnesses an unprecedented boost in the number of English learners in China.
The present research is a preliminary attempt to further the understanding of the Chinese varieties of English, specifically, the pronunciation of English by Standard Chinese (SC) speakers of English. It examines the detectable differences from nativespeaker norms of the speech production patterns of six SC speakers of English through three elicitation tasks. By exploring segmental and prosodic divergences from the phonetic norms of English that have been proposed in the literature as cueing the foreign accent, the present study investigates the principal research question: What are the core pronunciation features of Chinese English that serve to identify it as distinctive from the native variety?
The results show that in terms of vowel quality, despite a lack of distinctive vowel pairs (long vs. short vowels) compared with the RP speaker, SC speakers spread their vowels over a larger portion of the acoustical vowel space, which might be a result of the much larger number of distinct vowel allophones in SC. Besides, four pervasive and unique features of Chinese English related to vowels were also identified: rhotacized vowels, extra final vowel, monophthongisation of the diphthong and lack of reduced vowels. Additionally, it was found that the pronunciation of English by SC speakers could be identified reliably by the use of long closures before the release of stop consonants at the end of word utterances.
At the suprasegmental level, there was no compelling evidence to show that Chinese English was syllable-based even though more stresses were employed by SC speakers than native speakers. However, it was observed in both read and casual speech that SC speakers had a tendency to end all the sentences with a clear falling intonation. As a result, SC speakers had a much sharper F0 pitch fall at the end of an utterance compared with native speakers.
In the concluding chapter, this study explores pedagogical implications and discusses avenues for future research, most importantly how to provide a more rigorous analysis of Chinese varieties of English to facilitate mass learning and promote understanding and the status of Chinese English as the world witnesses an unprecedented boost in the number of English learners in China.
Date Issued
2008
Call Number
PE1137 Che
Date Submitted
2008