| This thesis reports an experimental study of English majors’ acquisition of weakening of function words in connected speech.The weakening of function words is a very important but neglectful part of phonetics.Even English majors can’t grasp the weakening completely.Therefore,this study starts with the weakening of function words,and explores how well English majors can learn the weakening so as to draw some implications for phonetic teaching and learning.It adopts contrastive analysis to compare the weakening of function words produced by English majors with those produced by Received Pronounced speakers.In the study,duration and formant are the main parameters.The subjects are 18 English majors of Shaanxi Normal University,in which 6 are freshmen,6 are the junior students who have passed TEM-4 and the rest 6 are the senior students who have passed TEM-8.The function words targeted in the material are 17 words,at,of,the,to,as,and,a,his,an,but,been,for,her,we,shall,than,them which are believed,in ordinary colloquial speech,to occur in their weak forms in over 90 percent of occurrences(Gimson,1981).The materials read will be recorded by the Software Cool Edit and the sound files will be saved as WAV.The recorded WAV files will be transformed by Praat into spectrum and then the spectrum will be manually annotated with the help of Praat.All the values of duration and formant will be analyzed through Excel and SPSS.The study intends to find answers to the following questions:1)How well do English majors produce weakening in English function words in connected speech?2)Do English majors’ production of weakening in English function words correlate with their English proficiency?If so,what is the acquisition order of weakening in English function words?The results of the data analysis are as follows.1)English majors’ production of weakening in English function words in connected speech is rather disappointing.Based on MA,among the 24 kinds of weak form,the accuracy rate of each experimental group are 16.67%,20.83%and 20.83%.Based on MB,among the 12 kinds of weak form,the accuracy rate are 16.67%,33.33%and 33.33%.2)English majors’ production of weakening has certain correlation with their English proficiency.According to the accuracy rate of each experimental group,16.67%,20.83%and 20.83%based on MA and the accuracy rate of each experimental group,16.67%,33.33%and 33.33%based on MB.3)There are three ways of weakening,schwa,reduction of the length of vowel and omission of vowel or consonant.And the acquisition order of weakening in English function words hasn’t been found based on MA while it is been found based on MB.The order,from easy to difficult,is reduction of the length of vowel,schwa and then omission of vowel or consonant.The findings of present study provides a new look into the acquisition of weakening by English majors and some implications for the learning and teaching English as a second language. |
