A Spectral Moment Analysis On The Acquisition Process And Acoustic Characteristics Of Chinese Retroflex Consonants Produced By Japanese Beginning Learners

Retroflex is considered one of the most difficult sound for Japanese learners of Chinese to produce.This paper aims to observe the acquisition process and acoustic feature of Chinese retroflex consonants production through tracking and recording of the Retroflex produced by 33 Japanese with 4 months,and the recorded sounds are documented within four spectral moment parameters by adopting Spectral Moment.The focal points of the research are as follows:whether the production has shown signs of regression,the effects of first language transfer,and contextual influence upon learners’ production of retroflex.The result shows that,the learners aggravated as they progressed.Also,the acquisition of/ts/and/ts~h/sound is later than that of the/s/sound.Among the four parameters,M3 and M4 highly resemble Japanese alveolo-palatal,indicating first language negative transfer.Analysis of three contexts(monosyllabic sounds,disyllabic words,short sentences)shows that M2 declines as the complexity of the given text increases,indicating that contextual influence is visible in the production of retro flex.