| English lexical stress plays a pivotal role in distinguishing word meanings and reducing ambiguity.Chinese,a syllable-timed language,is different from English which is stress-timed.Due to the differences between English and Chinese language systems,Chinese English learners have some difficulties in acquiring English lexical stress.At the same time,the transfer of phonetic rules of different dialects also has a certain impact on L2 English learners’ acquisition of English lexical stress.Based on this,this research makes a comparison of the English lexical stress acoustic data between senior high school L2 English learners with Huaibei dialect background and native English speakers through acoustic experiment,and analyzes the acquisition of English lexical stress of high school English learners with Huaibei dialect background.The research questions are as follows:(1)What is the overall situation of L2 English lexical stress acquired by senior high school students with Huaibei dialect background?(2)What are the acoustic features of L2 English lexical stress acquired by senior high school students with Huaibei dialect background?(3)What are the typical errors of L2 English lexical stress acquired by senior high school students with Huaibei dialect background?Based on the above research questions,an experiment was designed,and the research participants were divided into two groups: 30 senior high school students with Huaibei dialect background from Suixi Middle School and 2 received pronuciation speakers(readers of the audio material of English Pronunciation in Use:Intermediate).The stimuli material designed in the experiment were divided into three types: heteronyms,disyllabic words and trisyllabic words.The pronunciation of the research subjects was collected first,and it was processed into digital data by Praat6.0.3,and then the data was processed and analyzed by Excel 2010 and SPSS 25.0.The results of data analyses are as follows:Firstly,senior high school students with Huaibei dialect background could correctly acquire English lexical stress to a high degree,and the overall correct acquisition rate of English lexical stress is 85.08%.But for different types of English words,there were differences in the degree of correct acquisition.The overall correct acquisition rates for heteronyms,disyllabic words and trisyllabic words were 81.81%,87.93%,and 85.51%,respectively.Their acquisition of lexical stress for disyllabic words was best and the acquisition of lexical stress for heteronyms was worst.Therefore,they were not able to make the English lexical stress prominent enough with proper use of the three acoustic features.Secondly,HB speakers had the ability to produce stressed syllables with longer duration,higher pitch and greater intensity.Even though HB speakers were able to utilize the three acoustic cues to produce stressed syllables,their acquisition of lexical stress was still different from RP speakers’.In comparison with RP speakers,as for duration,HB speakers’ duration of stressed syllable was shorter,their duration of unstressed syllable was longer and their stressed-to-unstressed vowel duration ratios were lower.As for pitch,their pitch of all syllables was higher,but their pitch range of stressed and unstressed syllables was lower.As for intensity,their intensity of all the syllables was stronger,but their stressed-to-unstressed vowel intensity ratios were lower.Finally,the typical errors of L2 English lexical stress acquired by senior high school students with a Huaibei dialect background were mainly nondistinctive prominence between stressed and unstressed syllables and stress misplacement.The students were prone to misplace the stress on the second syllable of heteronyms and trisyllabic words,and misplace the stress on the first syllable of disyllabic words.Moreover,in terms of duration,pitch,and sound intensity,the difference between the stressed and unstressed syllables of English words acquired by them was not obvious. |
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