An Empirical Study Of English Consonant Clusters In Chinese Learners Of English

The current study sets out to test the Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis (ISCH) with regard to the acquisition of English consonant clusters by Chinese learners of English as a second language (ESL). Since the ISCH claims that "the universal generalizations that hold for primary languages hold also for interlanguages" (Eckman 1991), English consonant clusters implied in the universal Fricative + Stop Principle and the Resolvability Principle were chosen as target forms.15 Chinese learners of English from Hunan University participated in the study. They were asked to perform two tasks:word-list reading and questions answering. The participants'output was recorded by a high-quality SONY ICD-SX35 digital voice recorder and transcribed twice by the author and once by one of her classmates to reach an acceptable inter-and intra-rater reliability. After the transcriptions, the author sorted the data and calculated the accuracy rate of the participants'performances on each target form, at the same time, labeled the modification strategies employed by the participants and figured out the frequencies.The results generally conform to the statements in the two universal principles as mentioned above:the participants'performances on the fricative + stop final consonant clusters are generally better than those on the more marked stop + stop final consonant clusters, with the only exception of/-sp/, which might be caused by the difficulty of new words; all the three-member consonant clusters involved in the Resolvability Principle are modified more than their subsequent two-member consonant clusters. Therefore, Chinese learners of English in this study encounter greater difficulties in producing more marked consonant clusters, which is in support of the ISCH. In addition, the participants'performances also reflect an asymmetry between the positions of onsets and codas in syllables. The consonant clusters in the position of onsets are found to enjoy more privileged status over those in coda positions, because the accuracy rates of initial consonant clusters production are significantly higher than those of final consonant clusters production.As for the modification strategies, the participants in the current study applied epenthesis most frequently with extensive insertions of schwa, which might attribute to Chinese learners'preference for disyllabicity and their hypercorrection in the production. Substitutions of/r/also appear with rules, mainly due to the high similarities in the distinctive features between/r/and /l/.