A Perception Experimental Study On Chinese Prosodic Focus-marking Of Thai Learner’s Mandarin

"Focus" is the new information to be conveyed in a sentence.In recent years,the research on the encoding and decoding of prosodic focus in different languages has become an important topic in phonetics and cognitive psychology.In the second language acquisition,most researches focus on the output of spoken language of second language learners,while few studies have focused on the psychological cognitive perception.Based on E-Prime experimental platform,this study designed an online perception experiment,with 30 Native Chinese speakers and 21 Thai advanced Chinese learners as the research objects,mainly to explore the perception of Thai advanced Chinese learners to Chinese prosodic focus(including accuracy rate and reaction time).This paper analyzes the similarities and differences between Chinese native speakers and Thai advanced Chinese learners in decoding Chinese prosodic focus,explores the characteristics of second language learners decoding Chinese prosodic focus at the cognitive level,and puts forward relevant teaching suggestions based on empirical research.The present study examined the prosodic focus of different sentence positions and types,including the comparison and analysis of the perception results of sentenceinitial focus,sentence-medial focus,sentence-final focus and the broad focus.The results show that :(1)the reaction time of Chinese native speakers to the four kinds of focus from slow to fast is: broad focus > sentence-final focus > sentence-medial focus >sentence-initial focus;The accurate rate from high to low is: sentence-medial focus >sentence-initial focus > sentence-final focus > broad focus.For Thai advanced Chinese learners,the results of reaction time and accuracy were combined,and they could not correctly perceive Chinese prosodic focus.(2)Compared with Thai learners,The reaction time of Chinese native speakers to the four focus conditions was shorter and the accuracy rate was higher.(3)Although Thai advanced Chinese learners could not correctly perceive the Chinese prosodic focus,there was a significant difference in the reaction time of Thai learners under the narrow focus condition,sentence-initial focus >sentence-medial focus.The sentence-medial focus has the possibility of comparison before and after,which is easy for learners to judge and takes a shorter time.However,sentence-initial focus is located at the beginning of the sentence and there is no reference area,resulting in judgment difficulties.