An Empirical Study Of Intonation Errors Of Chinese EFL Learners

The thesis aims to discover the intonation errors frequently made by Chinese EFL learners and the related inducing factors by virtue of comparing one native speaker of English(NS)and 26 Chinese EFL learners(NNS)on the basis of the three-T theory developed by Wells and the relevant second language(L2)acquisition theories.The stimulus was adapted from that of the IViE corpus established by the phonetics laboratory of Oxford University.The adapted version is more condensed in length and richer with evaluating points.The present author invited Paul Tench,a world-renowned phonetician,to participate in the experiment and do the recording for the stimulus.26 Chinese EFL learners were randomly chosen from all of the A-level English class of non-English majors at Shanghai Normal University.The data collection of the EFL learners was carried out in the phonetics laboratories on Fengxian campus,while Paul Tench did the recording in the phonetics laboratory at Cardiff University.The audios were annotated by SPPAS and Praat.The relevant data were extracted by Praat as well as its scripts.Excel and SPSS helped to carry out the data analysis,statistic processing,and yield all the corresponding tables and figures.It has been found that with respect to the phonetic cue at the boundary of the intonational phrase(IP),the NNSs are inclined to use pause more frequently as against the NS.In the fluency of speech,the NS and the NNSs are significantly different in term of the duration and the number of the pause and the IP.It is thus argued that the NNSs' fluency is far from satisfactory.As for the distribution of IP boundaries,the NNSs tend to either miss the appropriate boundaries or place redundant ones irrespective of syntactic structures and semantic information involved.The main problem lies in the latter.More specifically,the NNSs have a propensity to put IP boundaries after the subject with simple structure or given information,before the defining structure,after “that” of the object clause,within the phrase,after the conjunction,before the final reporting clause and before the final vocative.The tonality errors,for one thing,are attributed to the lack of semantic awareness on the intonation level,breaking already complete information unit into several smaller units;for another,they are mainly caused by the relevant interlingual factors.In Chinese,the pause takes place more frequently.For any prosodic unit above the two-word prosodic word,pauses of various degrees may occur within such unit.In reference to tonicity,acoustically the NNSs and the NS are significantly different in terms of the degree of the tonic prominence,which in turn concerns the three acoustic dimensions – duration,intensity and pitch(pitch peak and pitch valley).Additionally,the NNSs tend to take the last syllable of the IP as the tonic syllable,some of which fail to be transferred to the appropriate position according to the displaced information focus.The tonicity errors are mainly ascribed to the relevant interlingual factors.The study evinces that unlike European languages,the Chinese information focus is mainly realized by syntax.Its unmarked position is the most deeply embedded position of the right branch,whereas the phonology merely plays a peripheral role.The final point of the three-T concepts refers to the tone.It has been discovered that the NS and the NNSs are significantly different in terms of the pitch range of the tonic segment.In the selection of tones,the NS's ratio of fall tones and non-fall tones is 5:4,while the NNSs show an observable preference for fall tones and the ratio is approximately 3:1.In the non-final position,the NS tends to use rise or fall-rise tones,whereas the NNSs' high frequency of using fall tones is independent of the change of the syntactic structure and the semantic information.The tone errors are also associated with the relevant interlingual factors.The contrastive evidences show that the pitch range of the Chinese four tones are almost the same with that of the NNS's tonic segment of English.Both are significantly different from the NS's pitch range in this regard.In addition,contrary to the English intonation,the pitch direction of the Chinese IP generally moves downwards despite the unavoidable internal bumpy process.However,for the English IP occurring in the non-final position of the sentence,its tonic segment more often than not should be applied with rise,fall-rise or level tones.To sum up,the thesis not only analyzes and encapsulates the distribution of IP boundaries,the tonic placement and the tone selection from the syntactic perspective,but also explores the NNSs' intonation reactions to the transference of the semantic information of the text.The thesis also carries out the acoustic analyses of all the three-T concepts,and thus it manages to discover the significant differences between the two groups in terms of the fluency of speech,the degree of the tonic prominence and the pitch range of the tonic segment.Last but not least,the corresponding reasons are investigated mainly on the basis of interlingual factors.