| This thesis is an empirical survey of Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of the tag question's intonation in both impressive and acoustic way. Tag question is a very common sentence pattern in daily life both in English speaking countries and in China. It is possible for a tag with simple structure to express different attitudes, which makes the tag question a very suitable target sentence pattern for an intonation analysis. The subjects of the present study are Chinese college students of non-English majors from a University in Jiangsu Province. 15 native speakers from Cornell University are also recorded as the reference standard. On the basis of Halliday's 3T system and attitudinal functions of tags with different tones, a matching test, a free reading test, a guided reading test and a questionnaire are designed in order to explore the following problems: 1) To what extent can Chinese EFL learners acquire the relation between the tone system and the attitudinal meanings of tag question? 2) What are acquisition characteristics of English tag questions' intonation produced by Chinese EFL learners? 3) What are the main differences between the features of English tag questions' intonations produced by Chinese EFL learners and the native speakers?The accuracy of the attitudinal meanings and tone choice are calculated to analyze the Chinese EFL learners' acquisition of tags attitudinal functions with different tones; the recordings of subjects' production are analyzed acoustically and compared with the native speakers' recordings to find out the features of their intonation of tags. The major findings of the thesis are as follows:1) Although the Chinese EFL learners have the awareness that different tones can express various attitudes, they cannot produce the proper tones in given contexts. Besides, the subjects tend to choose a rising tone as the default tone of tags which is obviously affected by the previous intonation instructions which overemphasize the grammatical function of tags' tone without paying attention to the attitudinal function.2) Chinese EFL learners always take the final syllable as a place for abrupt pitch change. Besides, the speech produced by the subjects is short of ups and downs, which makes it sound very odd to the native speakers.3) The pause between the statement and the tag produced by Chinese EFL learners is much longer than the native speakers. Most of the subjects tend to use pause to divide IPs (the statement and the tag), while most of the native speakers prefer pitch reset to divide the statement and the tag.4) Most of the Chinese EFL learners put the nucleus on the pronoun especially in a case with a rising tone, while almost all the native speakers put the nucleus on the auxiliary as what Halliday said on the occasion of a tag with a falling tone. However, a part of the native speakers also put the nucleus on the pronoun of a tag with a rising tone, which is quite puzzling.Based on the research findings, some suggestions and implications are presented, which will benefit English teachers as well as EFL learners: 1) systematic and detailed instructions on the functions of EI should be embedded into the curriculum so as to enhance Chinese EFL learners' proper awareness and knowledge of EI; 2) EFL learners should be exposed to sufficient authentic input of EI in order to acquire them step by step; 3) teachers' awareness of EFL learners' intonation problems should be highlighted in the daily teaching. In addition, visualization of intonation patterns compared with English native speakers' may be used to boost EFL learners' acquisition of correct intonation in different contexts. |
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