Contrastive Research Between Chinese And English Syllables

As the smallest unit of phonetic structure we can perceive, syllable is the initialcondition of the language system. Differences existing in this structure will beenhanced in the amplification, and eventually produce the great differences ofdifferent human languages. Therefore, the contrastive study of syllables that existingin the different languages will deepen our understanding of the whole languagesystem, and which will guide our practice.Based on the ubiquity of syllable in human language, this thesis has contrasted theunit of Mandarin with that of the Standard English. There are several weak points inthe contrastive study of Chinese and English syllables, such as: the study mainlyfocuses on the phonetic aspect. While too much work has been done in the structureof syllables, little attention has been paid to other important aspects. And the second isthat people tend to use the criterion of English syllable to compare that of Chinese;few have fully studied the characteristics of the Chinese syllable. Thirdly, the studiesespecially those of focusing on the differences are not systematic, they needs to besummarized. To counter these weak points, the paper on one hand sums up theprevious studies, one the other hand by using contrastive, descriptive, inductive andstatistical methods it finds out plenty of dissimilarities between Chinese and Englishsyllables. And it also makes the exploratory research on the reasons that producingthese differences from the way people think.Specifically, this paper carries out the following aspects: Firstly, we compareChinese and English syllables from seven aspects. From inside we compare them inconstituents, combinations of constituents, structure layers and types. From outsidewe compare them in juncture, usage and function. Secondly, contrasting to the formerstudies, we pay more attention to differences than similarities. And thirdly, we dosome exploratory work on the reasons from the modes of thinking. Through the study,we have come to a series of their different characteristics: non-phoneme vs. phoneme,unity vs. being pieced together, one-layer vs. multi-layers, trimness vs. diversity,discreteness vs. continuity, reversibility vs. non-reversibility, meaning-directivity vs. structure-directivity. And at last, we have summarized these differences to non-linearand linear. We have ascribed the differences between Chinese and English syllables tothe different modes of the two nations thinking, which leads the different ways theysplit syllables.From theoretical point of view, this study not only deepens our understanding of thecharacteristics of Chinese and English syllables, but also helps us to understand thecharacters of the two languages. And practically, the conclusion and the description ofthe features this paper has made can also be used as a tool to guide learning andteaching a second language.