A Study Of The L1 And L2 Transfer Effects On Chinese Learners’ L3 Russian Vowelacquisition

Nowadays third language acquisition is a common phenomenon.With the increasing political and economic exchanges between China and Russia,more and more Chinese learners choose Russian as their third language.For Chinese Russian learners,it’s difficult to acquire Russian vowels.In addition,phonetic transfer is inevitable in Russian acquisition.The phonetic transfer in Russian vowel acquisition has rarely been discussed in previous studies.Therefore,this study is undertaken to study of the Chinese(L1)and English(L2)transfer effects on Chinese learners’ Russian(L3)vowel acquisition.A total of 52 students were recruited in the present study,and an experimental study was conducted based on their production of Russian,English,and Chinese vowels.Before the production experiment,all subjects were asked to fill in the questionnaire.The main purpose of the questionnaire was to investigate the language background of the subjects.In the production experiment,the subjects were required to record Russian,English and Chinese materials separately.The production experiment was recorded by SONY professional digital recorder.This study analyzed the first formant(F1)and second formant(F2)of the vowels which were extracted by Praat,and the F1 and F2 data were compared and analyzed by Excel and SPSS.The experimental results are as follows:1.Phonetic transfer of L1 and L2 occurred when Chinese students acquired L3.There were significant differences in the pronunciations of Russian/a/,/o/,/u/,/ε/,/i/between Chinese students and native Russian speakers.The significant differences were caused by the phonetic transfer of Chinese and English.2.All acquired languages(both L1 and L2)had an impact on the target language in the third language acquisition.Chinese students’ pronunciations of Russian/a/,/i/were mainly influenced by Chinese/a/,/i/in F1 and F2.Russian/o/was mainly influenced by Chinese/o/in F1,and English/(?)/in F2.Russian/u/was mainly affected by English/u:/in F1 and F2.Russian/ε/had no correlation with English/ε/and/(?)/in F2.Russian/ε/was mainly affected by English/(?)/in F1.3.Language transfer in Russian acquisition included positive transfer and negative transfer.Chinese/a/,/i/had the negative transfer to Russian/a/,/i/in F1 and F2.Chinese/o/had a negative transfer to Russian/o/in F1,and English/(?)/had a positive transfer to Russian/o/in F2.English/u:/produced negative transfer to Russian/u/in F1 and F2.English/(?)/had a positive transfer to Russian/ε/in F1.4.L3 experience was a factor that influenced the degree of phonetic transfer of L1 and L2.The source and degree of language transfer of Russian were different between the high experience group(HE)and low experience group(LE).In general,the LH group had a higher degree of phonetic transfer than the HL group.Major findings confirm that phonetic transfer of Chinese and English occurs when Chinese students acquire Russian vowels.On the one hand,this study enriches the theory of third language acquisition and phonetic transfer,and also develops the research of phonetic transfer of Chinese and English to Russian.On the other hand,the major findings and acoustic data of this study provide some references for Russian teaching and learning.