A Comparative Study Of Yixing Dialect,PTH And RP Sound Systems

The purpose of this thesis is principally to supply teachers of English from Yixing Dialect area with basic linguistic and phonetic theories as well as practical examples of how to do contrastive analysis in their teaching of English pronunciation.Chapter One indicates briefly the purpose of the thesis, introduces some of the fundamental concepts and phonological terms as well as the transcription systems (including the Cardinal Vowel Scale) which are to be adopted in this thesis.Chapter Two describes the sound system of Yixing Dialect in comparison with that of PTH (Mandarin).Chapter Three describes the RP sound system in comparison with that of Yixing Dialect.Chapter Four supplies the major similarities and differences between the Yixing Dialect and RP with illustrations.Chapter Five focuses on both the positive and negative influences of Yixing Dialect on RP learning and discusses the causes of the influence.Chapter Six is the last chapter of this thesis ------the conclusion ofthe research and the author's aim for further research.