Intonations Of Complimentary And Ironic Exclamation Sentences In English Produced By Chinese College Studenis:An Acoustic Study

Exclamatory sentence,as a basic sentence pattern in both English and Chinese,uses unique intonations to express two different kinds of strong emotions:compliment and irony.The former tells the sincere praise while the latter intends to reach an ironic effect.How to acquire proper intonation patterns to express these two different emotions is definitely important for any L2 English learners,including L1 Chinese EFL learners.However,little is known about the intonation acquisition of complimentary exclamations（hereafter CE）and ironic exclamations（hereafter IE）produced by Chinese EFL learners,let alone the acoustic features of their intonation production of these two kinds of exclamation sentences.Inspired by this theoretical and practical need,the present study,based on the contrastive analyses,intends to explore the following research questions via phonetic experiments and acoustic analyses:（1）What are the intonation patterns of complimentary exclamation and ironic exclamation produced by Chinese EFL learners?（2）What are acoustic features of complimentary exclamation and ironic exclamation produced by Chinese EFL learners?The theoretical framework for the intonation patterns of the present study is 3Ts Theory---tonality,tonicity and tone（Halliday,1998;Wells,2006）,and the acoustic features include duration,pitch and intensity（Crystal&Quirk,1964;Hirst,1996）.Based on a pilot study and discussions with the supervisor and RP phoneticians,two basic syntactic exclamation patterns were selected for the experiment:’How+adjective+subject+linking verb!’,’How+adverb+subject+ predicate!’,for they are the most common exclamation syntactic patterns in English.All together 22 exclamation sentences were worked out,and they were triggered to be pronounced either complimentary or ironic by the designed context in the first clause.The subjects of this study consisted of two groups,30 college EFL learners at Yangzhou University,whose mother tongue is Mandarin and all have passed National Spoken Mandarin Test and CET4,whereas the two native RP speakers were chosen from the University of Cambridge,UK,whose pronunciation of IE and CE intonations served as RP intonation models.The recordings of the target exclamation sentences articulated by the two groups of subjects were collected in Yangzhou University Laboratory of Phonetics,Hearing and Cognitive Science in China and Phonetics Laboratory in University of Cambridge,UK.respectively.The recorded data were then annotated and analyzed acoustically via Praat 6019₆4 and statistically via Excel 2010 and SPSS 20.0.The results of the data analyses reveal the following findings:First,tonality,tonicity and tone are measured to explore the intonation patterns of complimentary and ironic exclamations produced by Chinese EFL learners.In tonality,RP speakers chunked ’How+adjective+subject+linking verb!’,both CE and IE,into one intonation phrase（IP）and ’How+adverb+subject+verb!’ into 2IPs,whereas 100%of Chinese EFL learners are exactly the same as RP speakers in the first syntactic structure,but a bit different from RP speakers in the second one（CE:75%;IE:73%）.In tonicity,RP speakers place the nucleus of ’How+adjective+subject+linking verb!’ on the adjective and those of ’How+adverb subject+verb!’ on adjective in the first IP and verb in the second IP,while Chinese EFL learners’ nucleus patterns of the first sentence and CE of the second sentence is the same,and a bit different from RP speakers in IE of the second one（IE:92%）.In tone,RP speakers articulate the CE of ’How+adjective+subject+linking verb’ with high falling tone plus unchanged boundary tone（hH*+L 0%）and the IE with high level tone plus low boundary tone（H*L%）,demonstrating that high falling tone embodies sincere compliment and middle level tone highlights the irony.In contrast,only 42%of Chinese EFL learners produce the CE version with H*+L 0%and only 38%of them do the IE version with H*L%.As for the syntactic structure of ’How + adverb+subject+verb!’,RP speakers produce the CE version with high falling tone with unchanged boundary tone（H*+L 0%）in both IPs（percentage:75%）and the ironic version with middle level high tone plus low boundary tone（H*L%）（Percentage:43%）and middle level falling tone plus unchanged boundary tone（H*+L 0%）（Percentage:43%）.In contrast,31%of Chinese EFL learners produce the CE version with H*+L 0%and only 27%of them do the IE version with H*L%.These findings reveal Chinese EFL learners are highly consistent with RP speakers in tonality and tonicity of both CE and IE,but significantly different from RP speakers in tone patterns,particularly for IE versions,i.e.,they are largely unable to articulate the irony in exclamations.Second,duration,pitch and intensity are measured to explore the acoustic features of complimentary and ironic exclamations produced by Chinese EFL learners.In terms of duration,for RP speakers,80%nucleus durations in IE is stronger than that in CE.EFL learners are consistent with RP speakers and the percentage is 54%;the whole duration in IE is longer than that in CE and the percentage is 90%.EFL learners are consistent with RP speakers and the percentage is 66%.In terms of intensity,the nucleus intensity in IE is stronger than that in CE and the percentage is 70%;EFL learners are consistent with RP speakers and the percentage is 39%.In terms of mean pitch,the mean pitch value in CE is larger than that in IE and the percentage is 90%.EFL learners are consistent with RP speakers and the percentage is 62%.These findings shed some theoretical and pedagogical implications.First,English teachers should be fully aware of the intonation patterns and acoustic features of English so that they can teach students correctly.Second,teachers should also realize that there are some differences for English sentences to be pronounced between the citation form and connccted spcech so as to highlight the correct and natural pronunciation of English plosives,which can be acquired by explicit perception and production training.Third,teachers should try to take advantages of some phonetic synthesizing and analysis tools,such as Praat software,to visualize and illustrate the acoustic features and articulatory qualities of English plosives,which will definitely arouse the students’ interest in English phonetics learning,and enhance their theory-based knack of English segments and oral English with the help of high-tech softwares,visualized tools and inspiring training.