The Experimental Analysis Of Plosives Acquisition By French Elementary-Chinese Learners

In the field of Chinese as the second language acquisition, phonetic acquisition research is inferior to grammar, vocabulary acquisition research. Meanwhile, research using acoustic experiment method is on the rise in the field of Chinese as the second language acquisition. However, this kind of research is still in a fledging period. Among them, research on plosive acquisition is in shortage, research for the French learners of Chinese plosive acquisition has not yet to appear which makes it a niche to explore. In order to have a thorough understanding of French elementary Chinese learners’mandarin plosive acquisition, this thesis would explore the issue mainly by using the acoustic experiment method supplemented by questionnaire survey, statistical analysis, comparative analysis, at the same time, some existing second language acquisition theories would be proved or disproved.The first part is introduction in which research background, the issues, methodologies and research significance are included. There has been no research about French elementary Chinese learners’mandarin plosive acquisition. However, plosives are the most common consonants in various languages. In addition, Mandarin plosives has the pposing characteristics of aspirated and unaspirated. So I decided to check on this question.The second part explains the main theoretical basis of this thesis and the research status of the phonetic acquisition of Chinese as a second language research with acoustic experimentations. It can be concluded that the means of experimental study and analysis methods both are in continuous progress, but most of the study shows the disadvantages of small sample capacity and single analysis method, at the meantime, national research also needs to be rich.The third part focuses on the methodologies and process of the experimentation,including the subjects choosing, survey designing and data processing and analysis. I finally chose12suitable French subjects and12Chinese subjects whose levels of Mandarin are first level of second class. Software Praat is used to record sound and do acoustic analysis, Software SPSS17.0is used to do statistical analysis, Excel is used to make plosive pattern pictures. The fourth part deals with the accuracy and concentricity of French elementary Chinese learners’ mandarin plosives’articulation. By contrastive analysis, it can be concluded that the French learners shows bad on accuracy and concentricity.The fifth part examines the systematicness of French elementary Chinese learners’ mandarin plosives’ articulation. It is carried by contrasting two kinds of plosives patterns one is of single subject and one is of the total subjects.The sixth part is the summaries of the characteristics of French elementary Chinese learners’ mandarin plosives’ articulation. In addition, the above-mentioned theories would be proved or disapproved. The result shows that two hypotheses of the Interlanguage theory, new transfer theory and Markedness Differential Hypothesis are proved while the result does not support Contrastive Analysis.The conclusions are: the articulation of French elementary Chinese learners’ mandarin plosives shows the following disavantages compared to native speakers’: higher degree of muscle tension, shorter aspiration time for the voiceless aspirated plosives, worse concentricity, more concentrating distribution in plosives pattern, higher on vertical axis, smaller gaps between the aspirated groups and unaspirated groups on horizontal axis.