Experimental Study On German-speaking Chinese Beginners’ Acquisition Of Disyllabic Tones

This study is a phonetic experimental study on the performance and acquisition of dissyllable tones of German speaking Chinese learners. Using Praat, a modern phonetic analysis software, we measured and obtained pitches of the recording samples, and discovered the regular patterns of tone performance behind the common errors. On the basis of former relative theories, we analyzed the reasons of the inaccuracy and errors in their tone performance, aiming at providing some reference for both the German speaking learner, the Chinese teachers, and later researchers in this field.We invited9German speaking Chinese learners of beginner level as our subjects, and5native Chinese speakers (Mandarin level1-B) to join our control group. As to the recording text, we designed a word list consisting of20dissyllabic words, covering all possible tone combinations. Both the subjects and members of the control group are required to read the word list twice in our recording procedure. Praat reads the fundamental frequency of each syllable at11equally divided points. With the T Value Normalization Method, we transform the values of fundamental frequency into a pitch value on a scale from0to5. After calculating the average pitch values of both the subject group and the control group at each point, we draw both pitch lines in one graph in order to discover the errors and performance patterns of the subjects. We defined two types of errors and the most typical errors are as follows.In a dissyllabic word, when the former syllable of the word carries a first tone, this first tone often appears lower than normal range; when second tone appears in a word, they are always pronounced similar to a full third tone, with the pitch of214. These errors are defined as tone range errors.When the former syllable carries a second tone and the latter carries a third tone, the former second tone is often pronounced like a first tone; when the former syllable carries a fourth tone and the latter carries a second tone, the fourth tone is often pronounced like a second tone. These errors are defined as tone pattern errors.With the theories of error analysis, coarticulation, inter-language hypothesis, and the comparison of pitch and intonation patterns between German and Chinese language, we try to explain the reasons that caused the error patterns above. And last but not least, we propose several detailed and practical suggestions on tone teaching to German speaking learners. We hope this study will make a little contribution to both the comparative phonology studying between German and Chinese, the error analysis studying of German speaking Chinese learners, and also to the specific tone teaching methods in Chinese classes.