Native Speakers Of English Foreign Students Chinese Metrical Errors Three-word Group Research

This research first designs a tri-syllabic text corpus, which contains64kinds of tone combination. In each kind of tone combination, there are four words, so the whole words’ mumber is256. Firstly, based on the text corpus, collect the sounds reading the corpus of eight English speakers and eight Chinese native speakers. Secondly, using the software named "praat", make the syllable segmentation, the textgrid, and get the data from the audio files, including FO and the duration of each character. Then, according to those data, and using the software "excel", draw some pictures to compare the differences of tonepatterns、 pitch range and durations of the first tone the second tone、the third tone and the fourth tone when they are respectively at the firs、 the middle and the last place of the three-syllable Chinese words between foreign learners and natives. Besides, find the errors of the foreigners’the third tone sandhi and the fourth tone sandhi and some other prosodic errors. At last, explore the reasons of errors and provide some useful suggestions for the English sppeakers to learn Chinese better.This research has something new in the study:1. Based on the corpus. During the designing of the text materials, avoid the LingShengMu syllables and use less syllables which include r、1、m、n. So it’s more scientific and reasonable and easy to make the segmentation between Initials and finals.2. The methods is scientific. Use the experiment methods and find the prosodics errors based on datas extracted from the audio files.The conclusions in the reaearch are listed as follows:1. The foreigners have errors in both tone adjustment type and pitch range. In all, they master the first tone and the forth tone better than the second tone and the third tone. About the first tone, there is some of the decline of the their fundamental frequency contour whenever in the first、second or the third place of the words, the contour is basically straight however, so there are mainly the type errors. About the second tone, when it is in the second place of the words, there are mailnly the type errors; when it is in the first and third place of the word, there are mainly the domain errors. About the third tone, there are mailnly the type errors. About the fourth tone, there are mainly the domain errors.2. About the pitch range, the common law of Chinese students and foreign students is the first character<the second character<the third character, with the exception of the second tone in the second place of the words. About the first tone, the pitch range of the foreigners is large than the Chinese students, About the other tones, the pitch range of the foreigners is smaller than the Chinese students with the exception of the second tone in the second place of the word.(Because there are type errors here, so this can be ignored).3. About the syllable duration, the law of Chinese students is the first character<the second character<the third character. The law of foreigners is the second character<the first character<the third character, except for the case that the duration of the third tone in the first character is longer than in the second place. And the syllable duration of the foreigners is longer than the Chinese students except for two cases:the syllable duration of the second tone in the third place of the words of the foreigners is shorter than the Chinese students; there are no significant difference between the foreigners and the Chinese students when the first tone and the fourth tone are in the third place of the words.4. When distinguishing the different structure of the "1+2" and the "2+1", the Chinese students use the way that giving different pitch range and syllable duration of the syllable in the second place and in the third place of the words; while the foreigners use the way that giving different pitch range and syllable duration of the syllable in the first place and in the third place of the words.