Perception And Production Of Nasal Codas By Shanghai Local Youths

The production of nasal codas in Standard Chinese is a major problem for Shanghai locals while Shanghai locals seem to be more ready to produce the nasal codas in English. The different performance in producing the nasal codas in two different language systems has been considered as a sociolinguistic question for long. People used to blame the mistake in producing nasal codas in Standard Chinese on Shanghai locals'attitude. However, this argument is challenged when a Shanghai local student lives with a group of students from north China who can distinguish and produce flawlessly the nasal codas in Standard Chinese, and gives much attention to the pronouciation of Standard Chinese, but is still confused by the alveolar and velar nasal contrast in Standard Chinese. Conversely, this same student could yet flawlessly distinguish and produce the nasal codas in English. My experience in its own right could challenge the sociolinguistic acount. In addition, from my observation and some primary study, I found this is an overwhelming problem amongst Shanghai locals, youths in particular, since they have received a more systematic education in English, compared with their counterparts. Thus, this thesis is initially motivated by the intention of explaining this phonologic and phonetic myth.The thesis provides another perspective to look at a long-held'mistake'in phonetic production with the help of an objective phonetic analysis tool, Praat, rather than subjective judgement, and tries to answer the questions that whether Shanghai local youths prefer the production of nasal coda in English to that in Standard Chinese; and why, if it's'yes'. The study begins with a phonological analysis among Shanghai dialect, Standard Chinese and the English language, based on which a perception-production experiment has been conducted among 20 subjects. The experiment results have then been evaluated in the framwork of OT (Optimality Theory) so as to uncover the innate hierarchical ranking of phonological constraints in Shanghai dialect with respect to nasal codas, and how it is re-ranked so as to acquire nasal coda by Shanghai local youths.The phonological analysis shows that for Shanghai locals, the lack of nasal contrast at coda positions incurs an internal disadvantage in producing nasal contrast between alveolars and velars at coda positions by Shanghai locals. In Standard Chinese, no evidence shows the distribution of nasal codas is determined for the sake of production, and even worse, lexical forms of Chinese characters can hardly contain phonetic clues. These make an external disadvantage for Shanghai locals to produce the nasal contrast in Standard Chinese. In the English language, however, phonetic clues can be directly drawn from lexical forms at word-final positions. In addition, in the middle of a given word, the actual phonetic realization is determined by the homorganic plosive follows. For a same morpheme, the lexical form gives precedence for phonetic compliance. The nasal distribution as such can cultivate foreign learners'native instinct and makes the salience in producing nasal contrast in English.The experiment results show that the subjects displayed no salience in reading speech, but they were more ready to produce alveolars and velars during the spontaneous speech in English, which is consistent with the phonological analysis. And, most subjects presented a coping strategy of nasal substitution in their nasal production, consciously or unconciously. Contrast rate made by the advanced subjects is much higher than the average ones.After assessing the experiment results in the framework of OT, I assume the acquisition of nasal codas by Shanghai locals shall be divided into three stages, with the initial stage based on the native phonology of Shanghai dialect, the intermediate stage when the contrast can be made but misplaced, and the final stage of full mastery. Also, with the evaluation set in OT, I found chances are that Shanghai dialect hasn't sacrificed the position for codas, given the fact that all subjects adopted nasal substitution as a coping strategy.