An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis Of The Acquisition Of Sentence Stress By Chinese Learners Of English

As an important suprasegmental feature in the English phonetic system,sentence stress bears a fourfold function in the English semantics, syntax, rhythm andpragmatics. A strong Chinese accent, frequently detected in the utterances made bythe Chinese-speaking learners, can be partly attributed to the fact that those learnersare likely to have trouble in assigning sentence stress properly.The existing literature about the acquisition of sentence stress can be dividedinto two categories: the first is based on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis. Studiesthat fall into this category are mainly predications or descriptions of the L2learners’transfer errors via a contrastive analysis of the phonological features between L1andL2. Studies of the other type are based on Interlanguage Hypothesis which, unlikethose of the first one, have directed their attention to the developmental patterns of theL2learners’ acquisition of sentence stress and the dynamic characterastics that featuredifferent acquisitional stages.It can been seen from the above that previous attempts to investigate L2learners’ acquisition of English sentence stress are quite restricted to surfacedescriptions of those learners’ transfer errors or developmental patterns in the wholeprocess of acquisition. What is still wanting so far is an in-depth exploration into themechanism that governs that process. Therefore, the present study, carried out withinan OT framework, is just a tentative attempt to fill in that gap.At the heart of OT lies the idea that languages differ only in that someconstraints are differently ranked, and that to acquire a language, one needs to rerankthose constraints. Working on this assumption and adopting an empirical method, thisstudy is to dig out the mechanism governing the acquisition of sentence stress byChinese learners of English, starting with an attempt to track down the specificconstraint hierarchies at different acquisition stages and the pattern characterising thisreranking process.The findings of the experiment indicate that: (1) The acquisition of sentence stress by Chinese learners of English is governedby a process of constraint reranking, and each of the three discrete acquisitional stagesis marked by a specific constraint hierarchy (for more details, see Chapter Four).(2) The reranking process follows a certain path (pattern) characterised by thedemotion of MAX-IO (P).The present study is an in-depth exploration into the phonological acquisition ofChinese learners of English; hence its theoretical implications for future work onrelated topics as well as its empirical impact on the practice of English teaching,especially English pronunciation teaching, in China.