A Study On Chinese Rhyme Acquisition In Thai And Indonesian Learners

In this study, we study the perception and production of Chinese prosody by Thai learners and Indonesian learners, with Two-line Model of Standard Chinese Intonation and Speech Learning Model (SLM) as theoretical basic. Compared to Chinese native speakers, we tried to find out the difference between Thai and Indonesian learners, with analysis acoustic parameters of Chinese prosody (duration, pitch).Perceptual results revealed that, the perceptual ability of Thai and Indonesian learners are lower than Chines native speakers, and there is no significant difference with Chinese learning experience. Silent pauses are important in perception of Chinese prosodic boundaries, which [+silent pause] boundary is more percept than [-silent pause] boundary. For sentence stress, the higher pitch prominence of syllable, the greater perception will be received. As syllable with [+high] is easier to percept as stress, tone-4syllable will percept as sentence stress more by Thai learners than Indonesian learners. Pitch level of bottom point and the pitch movement of last syllable are related to intonation perception.Produced results of sentences revealed that, the produced ability of Thai and Indonesian learners are lower than Chines native speakers, and there is significant difference with Chinese learning experience. Silence pauses are important feature of prosodic boundary marks by Thai and Indonesian learners. For sentence stress production, Thai and Indonesian leaners are weak in using pitch prominence. And Thai learners produced more prominence on tone-4syllable than Indonesian learners, with top points of sentence dropped on tone-4syllable either focus or non-focus. For question intonation, Thai learners produced with raising top lines and top points of last syllable, Indonesian learners produced with raising bottom lines and bottom points of last syllable.Produced results of paragraph revealed that, the produced ability of Thai and Indonesian learners are lower than Chines native speakers, and there is significant difference with Chinese learning experience. For prosodic boundary marks, the distinguish between different prosodic hierarchy are not so clear, as the comparison duration of silent pauses are small which produced by Thai learners. And the semantic structure are loose, as the average duration of silent pauses are longer than Chinese native speakers which produced by Indonesian learners. For pitch changing, pitch performance of Thai learners are more related to lexical tone; and pitch performance of Indonesian learners are more related to text position. For duration features in production, the rate of speech, mean length of run are lower than Chinese native speakers. Besides that, the occurrence of silent pauses are more often in Thai, Indonesian learners. For pitch features in production, the pitch range are narrow and the pitch changing are smaller than Chinese native speakers.Perceptual and produced results of Chinese prosody revealed that, the development of boundary marks, sentence stress, and intonation are different. The correlation between perception and production of Chinese prosody is complicated. For prosodic boundary marks, perception and production are correlated. For sentence stress and intonation, perception is better than production. Its mean that sentence stress and intonation are more difficult to acquire than prosodic boundary marks. For Chinese prosody acquisition, L1background has positive and negative role. The positive role just present in prosodic perception. Chinese learning experiences is less effect than L1background, especially for elementary and intermediate levels. For Thai leaners, the acquisition process of Chinese pitch features is "lexical to semantic", pitch adjustment from down to top. For Indonesian learners, the acquisition process of Chinese pitch feature is "semantic to lexical", pitch adjustment from top to down. For Thai and Indonesian leaners, sentence stress and intonation of Chinese are new phonetic category. So, their learning progress of Chinese pitch features are slow, and not successfully acquired.