A Comparative Study Of The Prosodic Features Of Sentence Adjuncts In English And Chinese

English pronunciation and intonation is important in conveying the information and indicating the speaker’s attitudes. The incorrect use of intonation may hinder the listeners from understanding the precise meaning. From the perspective of linguistics,rhythm, stress, and intonation are the main indicators of prosody. So Wells(2006)claimed in his world-renouwned book English Intonation: An Introduction,prosody could, in a narrow sense, be referred to intonation alone. When one speaks English, he should decide on how to break the reading materials into different chunks, which word should be stressed and what kind of tone patterns should be adopted. These are intonational features or prosodic features called tonality, tonicity and tone.According to Three-Ts Theory, prosodic features have their acoustic correlates namely as pitch,intensity, duration, loudness and so on. With different intonations, people could express different attitudes and emotions.Prosody is language-specific and different language has different pattern of prosody. Sentence adjuncts(SAs) are the most common and pervasive structures in both English and Chinese. How are they articulated prosodically in oral English and Chinese? Are there any differences or similarities in the prosodic features of SAs in both languages? Do L2 English learners’ prosodic features of SAs variate from those of native spearkers of L1 English? The theoretical and practical significance of these questions attracted me and inspired me to work on an experimental study based on the Three-Ts Thoery, which intends to address the following research questions:1) What are the prosodic features of English SAs?2) What are the prosodic features of Chinese SAs?3) What are the prosodic similarities and differences between SAs in bothEnglish and Chinese?4) What are the prosodic features of SAs in L2 English produced by Chinese EFL learners?The subjects of the present study included 4 British Received Pronunciation(RP)speakers, 4 Mandarin Chinese(MC) speakers and 20 Mandarin L2 English learners.The stimuli of the experiments were 48 target sentences in both English and Chinese with target SAs embedded in three sentence contexts such as sentence-initial,sentence-middle and sentence- final repectively. The Chinese target sentences were the translation of the English target sentences in Chinese equivelents in semantic meaning and similar in syntactic structure. The target Sentences were categoriezed accoording to their form in this study.The English trarget sentences were read by 4 RP speakers and 20 Chinese EFL learners, the corresponding Chinese trarget sentences were read by 4 MC speakers, The English recording data were collected in the phonetics lab in the University of Cambridge, UK, while the Chinese counterparts were collected in the phonetic lab in Jiangsu University of Science and Technology,China. All the recordings were carried out via Cool Edit 2.1 and the recorded data were then annotated and analyzed via Praat 5.1.30 and the statistics were generated via Excel and SPSS.The major findings resulted from the data analyses are as follows:1. Prosodic features of English SAs produced by RP speakers(1) In tonality, most RP speakers had a tendency to realize target SAs in one intonation phrases(IPs) whether they were in the initial, middle or final positions.Pauses and final-syllable lengthening were the most frequently used device to chunk the utterance.2) In tonicity, in most SAs, content words were usually the parts carrying the nucleuses with nouns ranking top in the percentage of nucleus and adverbs and adjectives ranked high too.The prominence of the nuclei was acoustically realized by its duration, intensity and pitch range.(3) As to the tone patterns of nuclei, RP speakers usually adopted falling tones(H*+L) or rising tones(L*+H) as the nuclei tones of SAs. As to boundary tones, when in the sentence initial, target SAs usually adopt high boundary tones(H%) or level boundary tones(0%) at the end of the phrases which indicate the unfinished speech flow; When embedded in the sentence middle,being the transitional parts of sentences, high, low or level boundary tones usually occur on both left and right boundaries. When SAs are in the final position, level boundary tones(0%) or low boundary tones(L%) are mostly adopted in the end.2. Prosodic features of Chinese SAs produced by MC speakers:(1) In tonality, MC speakers also tend to realize the SAs in one IP and they frequently use pause to chunk their utterance. Pause is the most frequently used boundary markers in chunking, regardless of the positions where SAs are embeded. Final-syllable lengthening is the second frequently used boundary markers, especially in the sentence-middle position.(2) In tonicity, similar to the RP speakers, MC speakers tend to put the nuclei on the content words. The percentage of nouns is the highest, which are higher than adverbs and verbs.(3) As to the tone patterns of nuclei, regardless of the positions of SAs, MC speakers often use falling tones(H*+L) on the nucleus and end the SA with level boundary tones(0%) or falling boundary tones(L%), high level boundary tones are rarely found.3. Contrastive Anaysis of the prosodic features of SAs in English and Chinese:Similarities:(1) In tonality, most RP speakers and MC speakers tend to realize a SA as one IP,whether it is a mono-adverb or a longer phrase. Pause and final-syllable lengthening are frequently used by both RP and MC speakers as boundary markers.(2) In tonicity, in both languages, the nucleuses often fall on the contentl words including adverbs, nouns, adjectives, verbs and so on.(3) In the tone patterns of nuclei, both RP speakers and MC speakers tend to use falling tones(H*+L) or rising tones(L*+H) on the nuclei syllables. Level boundary tones and low boundary tones(L %) are often found at the end of SAs.. Differences:(1) In tonality, for RP speakers, punctuations will not be a necessary marker for chunking while most MC speakers tend to pause when they see the punctuations. RP speakers often use pitch reset to chunk while MC speakers tend to use pause to be boundary markers, pitch reset is rarely found in the utterance of MC speakers.(2) In tonicity, English is an intonation language; RP speakers often deliver the meaning through the pitch variation. Chinese is a tone language, and the four tones of Chinese characters may have a strong influence on its tonicity. The pitch contour of Chinese utterance change more greatly than that of English and the pitch rang is wider.(3) In the tone patterns of nuclei, because of the strong influence imposed on the tones by the lexical tones of Chinese characters, MC speakers tend to use falling tones when ending an utterance. In contrast, boundary tones of RP speakers diversified.4. Prosodic features of English SAs produced by EFL learners(1) In tonality, EFL learners share much similarity in chunking SAs with RP speakers. Only in few cases, differences exist when SAs are embedded in the sentence middle. EFL learners tend to realize SAs into one IPs. With the growing length of SAs, rare cases are found to break the SAs into more than one IP.This may caused by the influency of EFL learners’ native tone. But one thing has to be noted is that many EFL learners are strongly influencedby syntax in reading English, they like to pause when punctuations arise.(2) In tonicity, EFL leaners’ nuclei are also laid on the content words among which the adverbs and nouns account for a large proportion. Chinese EFL learners’ placement of nuclei is rather similar to RP speakers’.(3) In the tone pattern of nucleus, for most EFL learners, the nuclei tones are usually a falling tone(H*L). Falling boundary tones(L %) are often chosen in ending SAs. The interference of L1 is quite obvious here.These findings not only provide a better theoretical and empirical understanding for the prosodic features of SAs in English and Chinese utterance, but also shed lights on the teaching and learning of English and Chinese as a second or a foreign langague in and outside China.