| Intonation, being the essential element and external form of a language, serves the human beings primarily as a medium of communication. Contrastive phonology is always recognized by linguists as one of the most basic effective sub-branches of contrastive linguistics, serving as an effective approach for language learning and teaching. Therefore, the contrastive analysis of English and Chinese intonation has great significance in the development of contrastive phonology and improvement of foreign language learning and teaching practice. In recent decades, some contrastive studies between English and Chinese intonation have been made, but the studies are not so comprehensive and systematic and many of them are restricted to the phonological forms. Although the experimental phonetics has been developed at home and abroad, the instrumental means is very scarcely used in English-Chinese contrastive studies. Therefore this thesis chooses intonation as the research subject and attempts to make a contrastive study of English and Chinese intonation from two aspects: structure and function, especially focusing on functional perspective and trying to collect instrumental data to illustrate the comparison. From the contrastive analysis, this thesis places hope to facilitate language learning and teaching, intercultural communication and dicoursal communication.This thesis comprises five chapters. Chapter one serves as an introduction, which includes the motivation of the study and the organization of the thesis. Chapter two is a brief literature review of English intonation study, Chinese intonation study and their contrastive analysis study. Chapter three provides the contrastive analysis of intonation structures in English and Chinese. With the comparison, the similarities and differences are found in intonation units, intonation structure components, and intonation patterns. Chapter four focuses on the functions of intonation in English and Chinese. Attitudinal function, discoursal function, grammatical function and accentual function is introduced respectively. Different theory authorities and instrumental data are collected to illustrate the contrastive analysis. This chapter is the core of the thesis, especially the part of attitudinal function and discoursal function. Chapter five is the conclusion, which gives the summary and significance of the whole thesis, points out that the study can be applied to foreign language learning and teaching, intercultural communication and discoursal communication, and suggests further study of English and Chinese intonation. |
