The Acquisition Of English Lax Vowels From The Perspective Of Typology:A Case Study Of Native Speakers Of Chaoshan Dialect

English lax/tense vowels are a pair of phonetic categories that are relatively difficult to acquire.On the other hand,the vowel system of the interlanguage is to certain degree an independent sound system whose construction order has its own inherent laws.At present,studies of second language vowel acquisition from the perspective of acoustic experiments are mainly aimed at the first-level vowels of two languages,with little attention paid to non-first-level vowels.Therefore,with English lax/tense vowels as the research objects,this study attempts to explore the construction pattern of English interlanguage vowel system of the native speakers of Chaoshan dialect,aiming to broaden the research field of vowel pattern,to increase the interaction between researches on second language acquisition and typological markedness,to provide case materials and typological references for the study of English vowel acquisition,and to accumulate first-hand materials and theoretical basis for the teaching of English pronunciation in the Chaoshan area as well.In this study,10 students from the third and fourth grade of primary school in Shantou are taken as experimental subjects.From the perspective of acoustic experiments,we adopt the method of quantitative analysis of vowel pattern to analyze the acquisition of English lax vowels by the EFL beginners of native Chaoshan dialect from the dimensions of degree of similarity,accuracy and deviation.It aims to answer the following questions:(1)What factors influence the acquisition process of English lax vowels by native speakers of Chaoshan dialect?(2)What is the acquisition order of the vowels produced by the speakers?(3)Can the acquisition process of similar vowels and new vowels testify the theories of SLA and typological markedness?The research reveals the following facts.(1)In the process of acquiring English vowels,native speakers of Chaoshan dialect are simultaneously influenced by their mother tongue and restricted by the markedness pattern.(2)Under the influence of the explicit and implicit rules,the construction order of the vowels includes:(a)similar vowels between the mother tongue and the target language are constructed earlier than the new vowels;(b)the first-level vowels are constructed earlier than the non-first-level vowels,namely,the tense vowels are constructed earlier than the lax vowels;(c)with regard to both similar vowels or new vowels,the construction order of less marked sounds is earlier than that of more marked ones.(3)The construction of interlanguage is a process of “merging” similar vowels and assimilating new vowels under the markedness pattern.This process effectively validates the “merger hypothesis” and two hypotheses of typological markedness.All in all,the above facts have fully verified the related theories of second language acquisition,vowel pattern and typological markedness,and thus have certain typological reference value and theoretical significance.