Prosodic variation in Chinese and in English produced by Chinese learners of English

Abstract

본 논문의 연구 목적은 중국어의 강세(accent), 운율경계(prosodic boundary), 성조(tones)등에 따라서 중국어의 운율 변화(pitch, duration and amplitude)를 연구하는 것이다. 또한 본 논문은 중국어를 모국어로 하는 화자가 영어 원어민이 영어를 발화할 때 나타나는 운율변화와 어떠한 유사성과 차이점을 보여주는 지도 논의한다. 모국어와 제 2 언어에서 나타나는 운율변화를 통하여 중국화자가 영어를 발화할 때 어떻게 모국어의 영향을 받는지도 관찰하게 된다.; The purpose of this study is to examine how prosodic variations are realized in Chinese as a function of prosodic factors in terms of accent, boundary and tones; to examine similarities and differences in prosodic variations between Chinese subjects speaking English and native English speakers; and to see how the mother tongue of an individual influences their production of a second language in prosodic variations. In this research, three experiments were conducted. The first and second experiments include the sound of Chinese ‘ma’ and ‘pu’ respectively. Both experiments examined the variations of speech in duration, pitch and amplitude relating to hierarchical boundary usage (Intonational boundary, Word boundary), accentuation (accented, unaccented) and tones. Our results found that a more strong phonetic realization was demonstrated when the targets were in the accented position. The targets had a longer duration, expanded pitch range and higher amplitude in any of the tones. The same results were also found in the English ‘pa’ experiment for the two groups. We also discovered the effects of boundary effect. When comparing the IP boundary to the Wd boundary using Chinese ‘ma’ and ‘pu’, subjects using the Wd boundary always had a longer duration than using the IP boundary. Perhaps Chinese speakers mark with duration, but they do not seem to use duration to signal domain initial (boundary) information due to the characteristic of their lexical tone language. The present study also found that pitch was always greater in the IP boundary than in the Wd boundary except for tone 3 in the sound of ‘ma’, where tonal coarticulation occurs. Both anticipatory and carryover effect effects happened. However, for the sound of Chinese ‘pu’, pitch in the IP boundary was always higher than in the Wd boundary no matter which tones the targets are in. Therefore, little tonal coarticulation was found in ‘pu’. The findings were that the sound of ‘p’ was a stop and an obstruent which blocked tonal coarticulation in Wd boundary. We also assume that both pitch and amplitude have an intertwining relationship. For the sound of English ‘pa’, pitch was always greater in the IP boundary than the Wd boundary for the two groups. VOT and vowel duration in ‘pa’ were found to be longer in Wd boundary than in the IP boundary. This was more true for Chinese subjects than English subjects. We can state that the mother tongue of an individual will influence their production of a second language.