A Study On The Intonation And Stress Errors Of Mandarin L2 Acquisition

This paper selects6English native speakers,6Cantonese speakers and6Mandarin native speakers as subjects. By analysing512sentence of different focal situation and different different moods, we find out the error in Mandarin intonation and stress of English and Cantonese native speakers.Experimental results showed firstly that in the wide focal sentence, the declarative sentence and interrogative sentence of English native speakers is very similar, so is Cantonese native speakers. The difference of two moods only lies in the end of the sentence words, which is different from Mandarin native speakers. Moreover, compared with the interrogative sentence, the statement expression is relatively better. Secondly, regardless of the focus position, English speakers don’t have consciousness of lowering the pitch level of the first syllable in statement sentences. But when the focus lie on the last word and the second word, Cantonese speakers also don’t have that consciousness. Thirdly, in the expression of focus, whatever the tone of the focus, English and Cantonese speakers have no post-focus compression. This indicates post-focus compression is not easily acquired in the second language acquisition, although it is an important clue of focus perception. but is not easy acquisition. What’s more, post-focus compression exists in English focus expression,which indicates that the pitchdrop phenomenon don’t easily transfer between languages. Fourthly,English speakers and Cantonese speakers are good at increasing the length and is weak in expanding the tone range and raising pitch level to express a stressed syllable. And they can’t combine the range expansion and pitch level raise perfectly. Fifth.when the focus lie on the last word or last second word, maybe affected by the mother tongue, the English and Cantonese speakers often lower the pitch level of the logical stress. Sixthly, when the focus falls on the last word or the last second word, English and Cantonese speakers can not properly deal with the relationship between the stress and intonation. Although they consciously expand tone range and raising pitch level, but the range is relatively small and the word contours usually change which rusults in the expression not in place.