Production Of Mandarin Neutral Tone By Uygur University Students

Neutral tone of mandarin Chinese belongs to the category of suprasegmentals, i.e. stress, and it has the function of distinguishing meaning. Uygur stress falls on the last syllable, but there is still controversy about its acoustic cue. Based on the contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, the present study investigates Uygur students'production of Mandarin Chinese neutral tone and acoustic cues of Uygur stress by means of acoustic analysis and identification test.Three experiments were designed in this paper: production experiment of mandarin neutral tone, identification test and production experiment of Uygur disyllabic words and nonce words. The production experiment and identification test of mandarin neutral tone showed that Uygur students had difficulty in producing the neutral-toned words and they tended to lengthen the neutral-toned syllable and produced the neutral tone with a falling one whether they produced the preceding full tone correctly or not. The acoustic analyses of Uygur disyllabic real and nonce words indicated that among the three acoustic cues, frequency and duration were found to be more important. A stressed syllable would be indicated by a falling pitch and longer duration, while intensity was not so important. The results of the experiment on Uygur disyllabic words and the results of the experiment on mandarin neutral-toned words could testify each other.This study found out the cause which resulted in Uygur students'difficulty in producing neutral tone and in what way Uygur students were different from Han students. It provided evidence for language training and learning. At the same time, it provided evidence for the study on the acoustic cues of Uygur stress.