Production Study Of Mandarin Chinese Tones And Intonation By Uygur Accented Speakers Of Chinese

The purpose of the present study is to investigate in detail the differences of Mandarin Chinese tones and intonation produced by first language students (Mandarin Chinese speakers) and second language students (Uygur speakers). The experiments include two parts: tone production experiment and intonation experiment of production and identification. 30 Uygur students from southern Xinjiang and 30 Han Chinese students from Urumqi participated in the experiments. The study focuses on three questions: 1) How well can Uygur speakers produce Mandarin Chinese tones both in citation forms and in carrier sentences compared with their Han Chinese counterparts? 2) How well can Uygur speakers produce Mandarin Chinese intonation compared with their Han Chinese counterparts? 3) Does Mandarin tones and intonation belong to two different layers or just one layer?Data collection in the experiment was conducted by using the speech signal processing package Praat (Version 4.2.04) and data analysis was performed by using the statistic program SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Sciences) (Version 11.5). Results of the tone production show that Uygur speakers are poor in the production of MC lexical tones both in their citation form and in carrier sentences. Yet Uygur students have comparatively better pitch curve on tone production when the four tones are produced in citation form than in carrier sentences. When produced alone Tone 3 is the most difficult one for Uygur students to produce and is often confused with Tone 2, while productions on Tone 1 and Tone 4 are much better. In the present experiment different carrier sentences have hardly any affect on the productions of the four tones because in each context Tone 4 is produced best and Tone 1 is next to it;...