On The Prosodic Patterns Of Relative Clause As Modifiers Of Nouns In English And Chinese: An Experimental Study

Prosody covers the most important aspects of the human speech includingrhythm and intonation. It plays an indispensible role in language acquisition andlanguage teaching. The differences of prosodic patterns between English and Chinesealways cause problems in second language acquisition for both Chinese EFL (Englishas a foreign language) learners and CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners inother countries. Relative clause as modifiers of nouns (RCMN) is a widely usedcomplex construction which has been studied a lot but most of the studies were fromsyntactic perspective. So far, there is hardly any previous research concerning theprosodic features of RCMN of both English and Chinese. This paper tries to conduct astudy to compare and contrast the RCMN in English and that in Chinese from theperspective of prosodic patterns so as to identify the similarities and differences in theprosodic patterns of RCMN between both languages and further explore to whatextent Chinese EFL learners can acquire the prosodic patterns of RCMNs in English.This paper is based on Three Ts Theory, namely tonality, tonicity and tone(Halliday,1967; Wells,2006) to investigate the prosodic patterns of RCMNsproduced by British Received Pronunciation (RP) speakers, standard Chinesemandarin (CM) speakers, and Chinese EFL learners. To be specific, this is an acousticand experimental study aiming to answer the following research questions:1) What are the prosodic patterns of RCMN in English?2) What are the prosodic patterns of RCMN in Chinese?3) What are the similarities and differences in the prosodic patterns of RCMNbetween English and Chinese?4) What are the prosodic patterns of RCMN of L2English in China? The experimental materials of the present study consist of13English andChinese carrier sentences embedded with RCMNs, among which seven sentencescontain restrictive RCMNs and six sentences contain nonrestrictive RCMNs. TheEnglish and Chinese carrier sentences are the same in meaning and similar in sentencestructure. To take sentence type into consideration, seven of the sentences arestatements, while others are yes-no questions. All the carrier sentences were read byfour RP speakers, four CM speakers, and20Chinese EFL learners. Their utteranceswere recorded in sound-proof rooms via Cool Edit2.1in the phonetics labs at JiangsuUniversity of Science and Technology (JUST) and University of Cambridge,respectively. The recorded data were then acoustically annotated and analyzed viaPraat5.3.52and statistically measured via Excel and SPSS.The results of data analysis reveal the following major findings.1. Prosodic patterns of RCMNs in English:(1) For rhythm, RP speakers apply vowel reductions in many cases to protrudethe nuclei, which is in line with the features of stress-timed language.(2) For tonality, RP speakers usually realize sentences containing restrictiveRCMNs as one IP while divide sentences containing non-restrictive RCMNs into twoor three IPs in line with the syntactic structure. As for boundary markers in IP division,RP speakers apply pitch reset and pause most commonly.(3) For tonicity, RP speakers put tonicity on the antecedents in both restrictiveand non-restrictive RCMNs and the nuclei are protruded from all three acousticparameters, namely duration, intensity and pitch range.(4) For tone pattern, RP speakers adopt H*L in most cases and they employ theboundary tone0%to indicate statements while high boundary tone H%to indicateyes-no questions.2. Prosodic patterns of RCMNs in Chinese:(1) For rhythm, CM speakers tend to produce every vowel fully, which iscorresponding to the features of syllable-timed language. (2) For tonality, CM speakers also treat sentences containing restrictive RCMNsas one IP in most cases while divide sentences containing non-restrictive RCMNs intotwo or three IPs according to the syntactic structure. Concerning boundary markers inIP division, CM speakers apply pause most frequently.(3) For tonicity, CM speakers put tonicity the on the noun or noun phrase that ismodified in both restrictive and non-restrictive RCMNs and the nuclei are protrudedmainly via pitch range broadening and duration lengthening.(4) For tone pattern, the lexical tone influence form Chinese mandarin should beexcluded and the boundary tone in Chinese does not suggest different sentence typesbut the F0position of last syllable does. The last syllable’s F0position of yes-noquestion is higher than that of statement.3. Similarities and differences of prosodic patterns of RCMN between Englishand Chinese:As for similarities,(1) Sentences containing restrictive RCMNs are treated asone complete IP in most cases while sentences embedded with non-restrictiveRCMNs are divided into two or three IPs in accordance with the syntactic structure.(2) In realizing the IP division, pause and pitch reset are the most frequently appliedboundary marker.(3) In all the sentences containing both types of RCMNs, thetonicity is put on the noun or noun phrase which is modified in most cases and it isprotruded via broadening pitch range as well as lengthening duration.As for differences,(1) In realizing IP division, pitch reset is more frequentlyadopted in English while pause is more frequently used in Chinese.(2) Tonicity isprotruded greatly via all three acoustic parameters in English, but in Chinese it is notprotruded obviously via intensity.(3) Different sentence types are suggested byboundary tone in English but by F0position of the last syllable in Chinese.4. Prosodic patterns of RCMN produced by Chinese EFL learners:(1) The rhythm of English sentence containing RCMNs produced by ChineseEFL learners features a lot of variations in consonantal durations while very few vowel reductions which is deviated from RP speaker and influenced by their L1tosome extent.(2) Chinese EFL learners treat sentences containing restrictive RCMNs asnon-restrictive ones and divide the main clause and relative clause into separate IPs.In dividing IPs of sentences embedded with non-restrictive RCMNs, they producequite native-like IPs.(3) Chinese EFL learners and RP speakers both adopt pitch reset as thecommonest boundary marker and pause as the next but Chinese EFL learners stillproduce much more pauses with longer pause durations than RP speakers.(4) Chinese EFL learners’ tonicity distribution is quite scattered compared withRP speakers but the nuclei produced by RP speakers are also treated as nuclei byChinese EFL learners.(5) The tone patterns produced by Chinese EFL learners are even more deviatedthan the nucleus distribution. The typical mistakes can be attributed to L1interferenceas well as the lack of grammatical and prosodic sense.The findings listed above provide empirical evidence for necessity of systematicphonetic training for tertiary-level EFL learners in their English classes and call forprosodic pattern awareness-rising exercises among the EFL and CFL learners whenthey are exposed to authentic oral discourses in English and Chinese as targetlanguages, particularly from those from Chinese and English linguistic backgroundsrespectively. Also it is highly recommended to adopt an experimental and acousticapproach to visualizing the features of target language phonetics and intonation in L2classes so as to achieve high efficiency of the teaching and learning of EFL/CFLinside and outside China.