A Comparative Study Of The Prosodic Patterns Of Prepositional Phrases In Chinese And English

Prosody studies how the pitch of the voice rises and falls, and how speakers use thispitch variation to convey linguistic and pragmatic meaning, belonging to the category ofsuprasegmental phonology. Thus prosody is an indispensible element in linguistics. It is alsorecognized that prepositional phrases (PPs) in both Chinese and English play an importantrole in information exchange and cross-cultural communication. Though there are somestudies on prosodic patterns of the two languages, few of them focus on the exact prosodicpatterns of PPs from a contrastive approach nor on the EFL leareners’ acquisition of EnglishPPs. So it is worth studying the prosodic patterns of PPs in English and Chinese. This paperfocuses on the prosodic patterns of PPs in English and Chinese. Moreover, this study alsoconducted some phonetic experiments to find the similarities and differences of prosodicpatterns of PPs spoken by Chinese EFL learners and British RP speakers.Mainly, this study intends to address the following research questions:1. What are the prosodic patterns of PPs in English?2. What are the prosodic patterns of PPs in Chinese?3. What are the similarities and differences in the prosodic patterns of PPs betweenChinese and English?4. What are the prosodic patterns of PPs of L2English in China?The materials of the phonetic experiment consist of13English sentences with PPsembedded and13Chinese sentences with PPs embedded. They are equivalent carriersentences in meaning and structure. According to the functions of PPs in the carriersentences, the carrier sentences can be divided into five types: PPs as the subject, attribute,adverbial, complement and predicative. According to quantities of PPs in the sentence, thecarrier sentences can be divided into three types: the sentence with one prepositional phrase,the sentence with two connected PPs and the sentence with four connected PPs.The subjects of the present were four British RP speakers, four standard CM speakers,and twenty Chinese EFL learners. The data were recorded via Cool Edit Pro V2.1at the sound booth in the phonetics laboratory, and the recorded data were then annotated andanalyzed via Praat. Finally, the statistic data generated from Praat scripts were analyzed inExcel and SPSS.The major findings are illustrated in the following parts:1. Prosodic patterns of PPs in English by RP speakers(i) For tonality, RP speakers tend to contain PPs in IPs, and in simple sentences, theyprefer to utter the sentences in one IP. In sentences that contain many PPs connected, theytend to divide them into two or three IPs. In addition, they mainly use pitch reset to dividethe sentence into IPs.(ii) For tonicity, RP speakers prefer to locate the nucleus on the final content word. Andthe realization of tonicity is through duration, pitch and intensity.(iii) For tone, all RP speakers tend to adopt H*L on the nucleus accent and end with aboundary tone of0%or L%in the phrase-finial.2. Prosodic patterns of PPs in Chinese by CM speakers(i) For tonality, in the first category in which the sentences are classified according totheir functions, CM speakers tend to divide the sentence into one or two IPs. When thesentence contains many connected PPs, they prefer to divide them into many IPs. And theymainly use pauses to divide the sentence.(ii) For tonicity, CM speakers tend to put the nucleus on the final prosodic word.(iii) For tone, CM speakers accent the nucleus with a tone of H*L, and the boundarytone in the phrase-final is0%or L%.3. Similarities and differences in prosodic patterns of PPs between English andChinese.(i) Similarities(1) For tonality, in sentences containing prepositional phrases of different functions,both RP speakers and CM speakers prefer to contain the prepositional phrases in IPs.(2) For tonicity, both RP speakers and CM speakers show a great tendency to put thetonicity on the final lexical word within one IP. Pith, duration and intensity are ways oftonicity realization. (3) For tone, these two groups tend to use H*L on the nucleus syllable, and the mostused boundary tone in phrase-final is0%or L%.(ii) Differences:(1) For tonality, all RP speakers prefer to use a pitch reset to signal boundaries betweentwo IPs, while pause is most used by CM speakers to signal boundaries between two IPs.And in sentences that containing more prepositional phrases, RP speakers tend to break thesentence into two or three IPs. But CM speakers prefer to divide the sentence into four ormore IPs.(2) For tone, for Chinese is a tone language, the tone of Chinese sentence is to a greatextent influenced by the tone of the word, thus the pitch contours change more greatly thanthe tone of English sentence and the pitch range is wider than English.4. Prosodic patterns of PPs of L2English in China(i) For tonality, EFL learners tend to divide the sentence into more IPs than RPspeakers, and they prefer to make the prepositional phrase as one IP, which is quite differentfrom RP speakers who prefer to contain PPs in IPs. EFL learners tend to use pauses to signalboundaries between IPs which is similar to CM speakers in Chinese but different from RPspeakers. The interference of L1may be a reason for this phenomenon.(ii) For tonicity, most of the EFL learners tend to locate the nucleus on the last contentword which is similar to RP speakers.(iii) For tone, the pitch movement of the nucleus syllable to the boundary produced bythe EFL learners is not natural. And EFL learners tend to change the pitch casually, which isnot native-like. The pitch range is also wide. These features are to a large extent influencedby the tone patterns of Chinese.The main contributions of the present study are:(i) So far in the literature, there are few studies exploring the prosodic patterns of bothEnglish and Chinese as well as the prosodic acquisition of English PPs by Chinese EFLlearners, hence achieving the originality in the research width and depth.(ii) So far in the field of SLA, there are few studies focusing on the prosodicacquisition of English PPs from both the impressionistic and acustic perspectives with an experimental design, hence achieving some creativity in the research methodology.(iii) Theretically speaking, the findings of the present study have not only broadenedour understanding of the prosodic system of both English and Chinese, but also that of L2English prosodic system acquired by EFL learners in China, hence filling the gap ofcontrastive prosodic studies of English and Chinese to some extent.(iv) Pedagogically speaking, the findings of the present study provide empiricalparameters for L2English and L2Chinese as a second language in and outside China,particularly for those from Chinese and English linguistic backgrounds. Moreover, it shedlight onto the teaching and learning of L2English and L2Chinese at home and abroad.