The Study Of Pronunciation Characteristics Of English Word-initial Consonant Clusters With Fricative Onsets By Han-Nationality EFL Learners

Consonant cluster is an extremely universal phenomenon in English.The pronunciation of English consonant cluster directly affects the learners'communication. Researchers in interlanguage phonology showed that ESLlearners often have difficulties with the English syllable structure.Specifically, they often make mistakes in the pronunciation of consonantclusters. Before the study of how to make fewer mistakes in consonantcluster in Han Nationality students' pronunciation, you must know thecharacteristics of their pronunciation of English consonant clusters.After the contrastive study of the fricative and the consonant onsetsdistribution in Chinese and English, we discovered that the fricative inEnglish and Chinese are only same in their form but different in their placeof articulation. The similarity between them is that they may be the same intheir writing form or heard same such as/s/ in English and s[s] in Chinese.The differences between them are the special places of articulation. Whenwe pronounce /s/ in English, make the tip of tongue close to the alveolarridge. When we pronounce s[s] in Chinese, make the tip of tongue close tothe back of teeth. After the comparison of the consonant onsets distributionin Chinese and English, we discovered the onsets of English syllables canbe formed by one to three consonants, but the onsets of Chinese syllablescan only be formed by one consonant. That is there is no consonant clusterin Chinese.Most of English consonant clusters are with fricative onsets. Sothe case study of this thesis will focus on the pronunciation characteristicsof English word-initial consonant clusters with fricative onsets which werepronounced by Han-Nationality EFL learners. According to the presentresearch situation and results of the contrastive study, we predict that whenthe Han Nationality students pronounce the consonant clusters withfricative onsets may make many mistakes. Specifically, they may modifythe syllable structures of English consonant clusters by deleting consonants,inserting vowels or replacing the consonants with another one. We also predict that the rate of mistakes in vowel insertion will be higher than theother two. The rate of mistakes in three consonants clusters is higher thanthat in two consonants clusters'. And the rate of mistakes in "fricative+glide" is higher than that in "fricative+liquid".Through the observation of Han Nationality students' pronunciation ofconsonant clusters with fricative onsets, we find that all the predications aretrue. Besides these, when we observe the results according the method ofarticulation, we found that "fricative +fricative" clusters are harder topronounce than "fricative+explosive" for English learners with HanNationality. While "fricative+glide" clusters are harder than "fricative+liquid". And when we observe the results according the place of articulation,we found that "fricative+velar" clusters are harder than "fricative+alveolar" while "fricative+alveolar" clusters are harder than "fricative+bilabial".This thesis analyzes these phenomenons according the theory whichrelates with interlanguage phonology, and summarizes the characteristics ofthe pronunciation of English consonant clusters with fricative onsets whichwas pronounced by Chinese learners with Han Nationality. Through theanalysis, we discovered that the mis-pronounced rate goes up with the raiseof the makedness. The rate of markedness relates with the place and methodof articulation, sonorant principle, the universal of the language, and theorder of mother tongue's acquisition.