| Studies have found that even if the mother tongue background is non-tonal language,learners’ Chinese tonal acquisition features are also significantly different.These differences form the "accent" of the interlingual tone,showing the phenomenon of "foreign tone".Based on the first language transfer theory in the field of second language acquisition,this study hypothesizes that the prosodic features of the learner’s first language will have an impact on the acquisition of Chinese tones.Pitch,the common acoustical correlation between lexical stress and tone,can be an entry point to explore "mother tongue transfer".This paper aims to answer two questions: 1.is there a stable pitch feature for lexical stress in different languages? 2.How does the lexical stress pitch feature of the learner’s mother tongue affect the acquisition of Chinese tones? This paper argues that the pitch features of a syllable can be composed of the pitch level features and the pitch contour features.Pitch level features include two categories: [+ high] and [+ low].The pitch contour features include five categories: [+ flat],[+ rising],[+falling],[+Concave curve] and [+Convex curve].In this framework,the study focuses on three groups of Chinese learners whose native language is lexical stress language(Chinese learners whose native language is English:NE;Chinese learners whose native language is Russian: NR;Chinese learners whose native language is Uygur: NU;There were a total of 30 subjects,with 10 participants in each group),and the the experimental results were analyzed by the combination of statistical analysis and distribution analysis.Experiment 1 is an experiment of lexical stress production in learners’ mother tongue.The intra-group analysis of the experimental results showed that there were significant differences in the pitch variation feature(PVP)between the stressed and unstressed syllables in English,Russian and Uygur languages,and the PVP feature was an important means to represent lexical stress in all the three languages.In terms of the differences between groups,When stressed in front,the PVP of English was "H L",while that of Russian was "H/F L".In the case of Post syllable stress,both English and Russian are similar,and PVP is "L F".In Uygur,there is only one lexical stress mode,and PVP is "L F".In general,lexical stress in all three languages has a relatively stable feature,but there are differences among different languages.Experiment 2 was a Chinese tone perception experiment.The results show that,in terms of single tone,because the PVP of Chinese T3,T4,T1 and Ne and NR learners’ native language word stress matches,the perceptual accuracy and perceptual tendency of the above three tone categories are high.Due to the lack of feature matching,the perceptual accuracy and propensity of NU group for Chinese T1 were lower than that of T3 and T4.All the three groups of subjects’ perception of Chinese T2 was affected by "syllable position" and "tone combination".The types of errors tend to be high level(H)and low level/level(L).In terms of disyllabic tones,the disyllabic tones that match the learner’s native lexical stress PVP combination(the combination between H,L and F)have higher perceptual tendency and accuracy,and shorter response time.The experiment shows that learners’ perception of Chinese tones is obviously affected by the lexical stress PVP in their native language.Experiment 3 was a Chinese tone production experiment.The results showed that,In terms of single tone,The TDF of those Homogeneous interlanguage tones produced by the learners(T1,T3 and T4 produced by the NE and NR groups,T3 and T4 produced by the NU group)are consistent with the PVP of their native language。However,the Non-homogeneous tones(T2 tones produced by the NE and NR groups,T1 and T2 tones produced by the NU group)is influenced by "syllable position" and "tone combination" factors.In terms of disyllabic production,The combination of H(high),L(low)and F(falling)has a higher tendency and the main features of the production biased errors were concentrated in the combination of native PVP features.The production experiment show that the production of Chinese tones is obviously affected by the lexical stress in the learner’s L1.The research also found that the perception and production results of the 3 groups of learners had certain consistency in the distribution of TDF errors,the source of errors and the accuracy of TDF acquisition.The results show that there are stable patterns of lexical stress pitch among English,Russian and Uygur languages,and there are differences among the three languages.The NE,NR and NU groups were influenced by the PVP of their native language words,and there were significant differences in their perception and production of Chinese tones.However,there was a certain degree of consistency between the participants’ perception of Chinese tones and their production results.The PVP at the word level of learners’ mother tongue is an important factor that causes the "foreign tone" at the syllable level of Chinese interlanguage. |
