A Contrastive Study On Sound Systems Of Zhuji Dialect And Received Pronunciation

There is identity, similarities and differences between China's Zhuji Dialect and English RP speech sounds. The purpose of writing this paper is to provide the reader with a schema of the sound system of Zhuji Dialect as compared with those of RP and PTH. RP has 3 different types: Conservative, Advanced and General. General RP is chosen here as the model for this study, in which the writer offers a brief account of the General RP sound system and that of PTH at first, then that of the Zhuji Dialect next, which has 36 initials and 43 finals. She describes each Zhuji phoneme and gives a brief comparison between the Zhuji Dialect and PTH sound systems. The most important part of this thesis is the comparison of the sound system of Zhuji Dialect and that of General RP. Both Zhuji Dialect and General RP have voiced and voiceless consonants. In General RP, the feature of aspirated vs unaspirated does not change the meaning of a word, but in Zhuji Dialect it distinguishes lexical meanings. Zhuji and General RP vowels are again quite different in their classification, distribution, length, shape of the lips and tension of the articulators. In order to help the Zhuji locals acquire a better mastery of General RP pronunciation, this study tries to inform them that some of those RP phonemes which they are most likely confused with are therefore illustrated and compared with those relevant Zhuji ones. And as the Zhuji Dialect sound system may exercise both positive and negative influences on RP pronunciation learning, the writer tries here to focus her study on the latter, that is: 1) articulatory habit; 2) articulatory laziness; 3) parallel transfer. The conclusive part of this study gives an account of the could-be defects of this paper as well as the forthcoming research the writer is trying to do in not too long a time.