A Study On Prosodic Features Of Chinese Simple Introduction Sentences Spoken By Korean Students

“What exactly is foreign accent” is a quite interesting research issue in theChinese L2phonetic teaching. In this dissertation, we go into more details onprosodic features of Chinese simple introduction sentences spoken by Korean students.The following is a brief introduction of each chapter.Chapter one introduces the research causes, research issues, research fields,research methods and research aims. This research designs a comparative analysiswith three experimental studies and aims on finding the prosodic features of Chinesesimple introduction sentences spoken by Korean students.To narrow down the research aims, chapter two defines the scope of the accentof Korean students and their Chinese prosodic features. Based on the theory ofprosodic model and distinctive features, as well as existing studies on Chinese andKorean prosodic features, we conduct a slice by slice comparative analysis betweenChinese and Korean prosodic features, which are composed by foot, boundary,rhythm and intonation. We anticipate their features and at last we also propose ahypothesis that Korean students show more prosodic features in the aspect of Chinesepitch.In order to study the possible L1transfer effects of Korean students in theirChinese learning, Chapter two designs some Korean simple introduction sentencesmaterials to find the Korean prosodic features in foot, boundary, and intonation. Theresults show that, as for Korean language, foot is the unit of rhythm but the stress hasno regular position. Korean stress is embodied by pitch, tone duration, and intensity.The longest pause marks an intonation with independent meaning. In this experiment,only H pitch and L pitch appear in the intonation boundary.In order to study the prosodic features of Chinese simple introduction sentencesspoken by Korean students, chapter four conducts a perceptual analysis carried byChinese native speakers. Chinese native speakers are required to mark out the stressand pause when they hear the recording of the materials. Results show that, Korean students have more obvious pauses comparing to Chinese native speakers becauseKoreans students mainly take a pause according to grammar words. Meanwhile, footstress and intonation stress are both identified by Chinese subjects who are morelikely to indentify a fourth tone in boundary as a stress.In order to explore the discrepancy between perceptual analysis and experimentalanalysis, chapter five further designs an experimental analysis of Chinese simpleintroduction sentences. Results show that, the Chinese prosodic features of Koreanstudents are mainly embodied on the element of boundary; Korean students tend tohave a lower pitch on the first tone, with a lower upper bound on the second tone, andwith a longer and wider duration on the fourth tone; Korean students tend to have astronger stress on the boundary fourth tone and hence tones in foot are notcoordinated which may be the result of their intentional endeavor to pronounce clearlyeach single character. The experimental results of speech pauses of Korean studentsare similar to the result of perceptual analysis of Chinese native speakers. As for theintonation, Korean students perform an even pitch range, hardly have focus salience,and are lack of intonation stress which is influenced by foot stress for them.In order to verify the relativity of Chinese stress and acoustics features, chaptersix runs a coherence analysis between stress and pitch range, tone duration, as well asthe salience of intensity range. We find that the pitch range and high spot of pitch playa more important role in forming stress. The salience of stress is indispensable.Besides this feature, Chinese stress also shows a H-L sudden fall feature. Koreanstudents have different stress position from Chinese native speakers.At last, based on the platform of optimality theory and our findings in abovechapters, chapter seven analyzes and concludes Korean students’ prosodic features ofChinese simple introduction sentences. It also further explains the reason of a strongerboundary fourth tone: Korean students misunderstand the H-L pitch of Chinese fourthtone as a stress feature of a falling stress from high pitch point to low pitch point.Hence, their fourth tone sounds stronger.