A Contrastive Study Of The Prpsodic Patterns Of Sentence-initial Advebial Structures Between English And Chinese

Prosody is one of the basic aspects of phonetic study, which is the structuremade up from the different constituents inside of the utterance (Beckman andEdwadrs,1994). As prosody is often regarded as language-specific, the prosodicpatterns are usually difficult to acquire for EFL (English as a foreign language)learners or CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners. So a contrastive study ofprosodic patterns between English and Chinese is significant for EFL and CFL studies.However, the relevant research is sparse in number and superficial in quality.Sentence-initial Adverbial Structures (SiAdvSs) is one of the most prevail syntacticstructures in most of languages, including English and Chinese, little is known abouthow they are realized prosaically in the oral utterance.This study adopts the Three Ts Theory (tonality, tonicity and tone)(Halliday,1967; Wells,2006) to explore the prosodic patterns of SiAdvSs in English, Chinese aswell in L2English produced by Received Pronunciation (RP) speakers, standardChinese mandarin (CM) speakers, and Chinese learners of English as a foreignlanguage (EFL) respectively. Specifically, it intends to address the following researchquestions:(1)What are the prosodic patterns of SiAdvSs in English?(2)What are the prosodic patterns of SiAdvSs in Chinese?(3)What are the similarities and differences in the prosodic patterns of SiAdvSsbetween English and Chinese?(4) What are the prosodic patterns of SiAdvs of L2English in China? To find answers to the research questions above, this study adopted anexperimental and acoustic design. The treatment consists of18English and Chinesecarrier sentences with target SiAdvSs embedded. According to the ingredients of thetarget sSiAdvSs, they can be divided into five types: an adverb as the SiAdvS, anadverb phrase as the SiAdvS, a participle phrase as the SiAdvS, an infinitive phrase asthe SiAdvS and a clause as the SiAdvS.The subjects of the study consist of three groups: four British RP speakers, fourstandard CM speakers, and twenty Chinese EFL learners. They were required to readthe materials in both English and Chinese. The data were recorded via Cool Edit ProV2.1in the Phonetics Laboratory in University of Cambridge and Jiangsu Universityof Science and Technology respectively, and the recorded data were then annotatedand acoustically analyzed via Praat software5.2.24and statistically measured viaExcel and SPSS12.0.The results of data analysis reveal the following major findings.(1) Prosodic patterns of SiAdvSs in English:(i) For tonality, RP speakers tend to read these SiAdvSs in just one intonationphrases (IPs). And pitch reset is most frequently used mark to chunk the utterance bythe RP speakers.(ii) For tonicity, RP speakers tend to put the nucleuses on the lexical words.Thepercentage of adverbs as the nucleuses is the highest. That of verbs and nouns as thenucleuses is also high.(iii) For tone, RP speakers typically tend to realize the SiAdvSs (40.3%) in thetone pattern of [%L+H*L+H%] or [%L+H*L+0%]), that is a falling tone (H*L) onthe nucleus with a low tone (%L) at the start and a high boundary tone (H%) or alevel boundary tone (0%) at the end.(2) Prosodic patterns of SiAdvSs in Chinese: (i) CM speakers tend to take the SiAdvSs as one IPs. And pause is mostfrequently used mark to chunk the utterance by the CM speakers.(ii) For tonicity, CM speakers tend to put the nucleuses on the lexical words.The percentage of verbs as the nucleuses is the highest. That of adjectives and adverbsas the nucleuses is also high.(iii) For tone, CM speakers typically tend to realize the SiAdvSs (47.2%) in thetone pattern of [H*L+L%], that is a falling tone (H*L) on the nucleuses with a fallingboundary tone (L%) at the end. And CM speakers give more pitch variations in theutterance.(3) Similarities and differences in the prosodic patterns of SiAdvSs betweenEnglish and Chinese:Similarities:(i) For tonality, almost all RP speakers and CM speakers tend to take theSiAdvSs as one IPs.(ii) For tonicity, most of the nucleuses are on the lexical words in both Englishand Chinese.(iii)For tone, the tones of the nucleuses in English are mainly the falling (H*L)accompanied by a high boundary tone (H%) at the end. This is similar to that of thenuceluses in Chinese which is also mainly the falling (H*L), except that the boundarytone in Chinese is mainly the falling tone (L%) or a level tone (0%). Both in Englishand Chinese, the longer the SiAdvS is, more pitch variations it has.Differences:(i) For tonality, pitch reset is most frequently used mark to chunk the utterancein English while pause is most frequently used mark to chunk the utterance in Chinese.(ii) For tonicity, in English, the percentage of adverbs as the nucleuses is thehighest; in Chinese, the percentage of verbs as the nucleuses is the highest. (iii)For tone, the boundary tone of English is mainly rising while that ofChinese is mainly the falling tone or level tone. Chinese SiAdvSs have more pitchvariations.(4) Acquisition of the prosodic patterns of English SiAdvSs by EFL learners(i) For tonality, EFL leaners tend to take the SiAdvSs as one IPs. But influencedby the mother tongue，Chinese, in which the tonality is realized through pause,pause is most frequently used mark to chunk the utterance by EFL learners.(ii) For tonicity, EFL leaners tend to put the nucleuses on the lexical words. Thepercentage of adverbs as nucleuses is the highest. This is similar to that by RPspeakers.(iii) For tone,84.8%of EFL learners adopt the falling boundary tone (L%) atthe end of the SiAdvSs.54.4%of these SiAdvSs have a falling tone (H*L) on thenucleuses with a falling boundary tone (L%) at the end. Chinese EFL learners tend togive the tone pattern of English SiAdvSs more pitch variation as in Chinese. So, thetone pattern, especially the boundary tone, is influenced much by the Chinese.