A Diachronic Study On The Acquisition Of English Liaison Of English Majors From The Perspective Of The Optimality Theory

After its birth in the 90 s of the last century,the Optimality Theory is controversial in the beginning but is practically applied in the fields of semantics,phonology,syntax and so on.The core concept of OT is constraints which exist in all languages universally and the differences of various languages are connected with the hierarchies of constraints.The OT can be applied to explain the universal and unique phenomenon of languages.The thesis mainly focuses on proving the applicability of OT in explaining the liaison acquisition,discussing and explaining the liaison mistakes made by English majors during four years in the new perspective.On the basis of the Optimality Theory,this thesis discusses the acquisition of English liaison about 26 English majors for four years diachronically,empirically and contrastively.This phonetic corpus is collected by the author’s supervisor from the year of 2013 to 2016 and the author participates in the last time.From the perspective of OT,the thesis analyzes and explains rules of English liaison,which proves that the OT is adoptable in the studies on English liaison.The software SPSS is employed to analyze data collected and questionnaire is planned to discuss the factors affecting the acquisition of English liaisons.It is found that liaison mistakes that students make can be separated into three types:the first is consonant plus vowel,the second is consonant plus consonant,the third is vowel plus vowel.The main reason why students make mistakes is that the various hierarchies of Chinese and English have influences on students.The results of data analysis show that the outcome of acquisition is not as good as what is expected.The overall trend shows that the accuracy of 2013 to 2014 falls down,while that of 2014 to2016 rises.As for special cases,the author analyzes them from the view of comparison of English liaison with Chinese tones.The data show that there exists obvious relations between learning duration and effect.According to the questionnaire,the effective learning time and awareness of liaison have an effect on acquisition,however,many learners do not put it into practice.It is found that students’ perception does not accordwith output,therefore,good learning environment should be promised.The liaison mistakes can be explained with the Optimality Theory which holds that all language share the same universal constraints(also called language rules)while the hierarchies are various in different languages.English majors have learned liaison rules during college years,but Chinese rules have a great influence on themselves.The OT not only explains the reasons that lead to liaison mistakes but explains the tendency of mistakes in the four years.The research also proves that the Optimality Theory is acceptable in the field of English liaison.In addition,this thesis provides suggestions on foreign language learning and teaching.