Second Language Vowel Acquisition The Role Of Migration In Experimental Studies

In the modern society, it is very common that people learn two or three languages or dialects other than their mother tongues or mother dialects. It is significant to explore the function of language transfer in these acquisition processes and interlanguage's development theoretically and practically. Therefore, by applying the methods of acoustical experiment and statistical analysis and by taking the idea of vowel pattern into consideration, this thesis studies the vowel acquisition of the second foreign language. The pronunciations of the second foreign language uttered by three kinds of students are compared and analyzed by computer to investigate the different roles of the mother tongue and the first foreign language in the process of the second foreign language vowel acquisition.The main results of the study are as follows:1. Both the mother tongue and the first foreign language transfer the vowel pronunciation of the second foreign language. The vowel pronunciation of the second foreign language is not only interfered by mother tongue but also by the first foreign language. The vowel pronunciation of the first foreign language will interfere that of the second foreign language only when mother tongue does not transfer the second foreign language while the first foreign language does.2. In the process of the second foreign language learning, the interferences of the mother tongue are more than those of the first foreign language. When both the mother tongue and the first foreign language transfer the second foreign language, the second foreign language is mainly transferred by the mother tongue. The different roles between mother tongue and the first foreign language are due to the essential difference of the two systems.3. Generally speaking, there is no difference between the modes of mother tongue's interference to the second foreign language and that of the first foreign language. The previous researches show that one phoneme of the mother tongue is able to transfer one or two phonemes of the targeted language, which forms the "one to one" and "one to two" modes. In this thesis, the analysis of the results of the experiments reveals that one phoneme of the first foreign language is also able to transfer one or two phonemes of the second foreign language, which forms the "one to one" and "one to two" modes as the mother tongue does.4. In the interference process of the first foreign language to the second foreign language, the role of distinctive features is more important than that of acoustical expression. By investigating the Chinese students' pronunciation of French vowels /(?)/ and /o/, it indicates that the role of distinctive features is more important than that of acoustical expression. This phenomenon is also discovered in the previous studies which focus on the interference of mother tongue. Thus, it can be further concluded that distinctive features, instead of acoustical expression, play a more important role in the process of language transfer.5. In the development of the phonemes of the second foreign language, the original source of the interference will affect their development. The kind of differences mainly reflects on the development of the vowel accuracy. The accuracy of the vowels that is transferred by the first foreign language improves faster than that of the vowels which is transferred by mother tongue. Meanwhile, according to the development of vowel, the phenomena of interference could be divided into two levels and three kinds. The first level lies on whether the vowels are interfered or not. This difference mainly reflects on the degrees of pronunciation centralization on the initial stage. The second level lies on whether the vowels are positively transferred or not. The differences mainly reflect on the degrees of accuracy of all the stages.6. In the development of the vowel system of the second foreign language, the interferences of the mother tongue is far more than that of the first foreign language. The development of the frame work of the second foreign language system is mainly interfered by mother tongue with little influence of the first foreign language. Considering articulated errors, the interference of mother tongue is evident, resulting in not only the errors of certain phonemes but also systematic errors of the vowel system. Meanwhile, the errors caused by the interference of the first foreign language and errors caused by new vowels are relatively small, which are only phoneme errors.