A Sociophonetic Study On The Word-final Consonant Clusters (t/d)-deletion In The American English Speakers And Chinese English Learners

Sociophonetics, the interface of sociolinguistics and phonetics, is a field that hasexpanded rapidly in recent years. It borrows the way of experimental phonetics andstudies the language variation, phonological forms, their relationship with social andregional factors and interactional effects. Based on previous researches at home andabroad, this paper tries to do a diachronic and synchronic study on the languagevariation from the aspect of word-final (t/d)-deletion of the reading style in theChinese English learners and American English speakers, and gives the analysis abouttheir differences and similarities and the potential influence factors.With the method of experimental phonetics and the variable rule analysis andusing the auditory phonetic analysis and the software PRAAT, the paper, based onthe reading audio data of phonetically-compact sentences collected from161American English speakers from northern America, and51Chinese English learners,including30Tibetan English learners and21Chinese Han English learners whospeak standard mandarin, extracts the relevant data of formant, duration and energyfrom the word-final consonant clusters with (t/d) and compares with the relevantparameters in the international commonly used corpus TIMIT, thus analyzing thepotential restraint factors conditioning the (t/d)-deletion from the aspects ofphonological factors, morphological factors and other social factors.The study showed that the (t/d)-deletion rate of the American English speakerstoday improves significantly, reaching43%, compared with the study of Guy (1980）,Poplack&Tagliamonte (2001) and other previous studies. The hierarchy of theinfluence of the preceding segment forms the order：Sibilants, Nasals,＄(stops),Laterals and Fricatives; and the order in the following segments is: K (consonants), U(liquids), Glides, Q (pauses) and Vowels. In the morphological conditioning factors,the result shows that the deletion rate of mono-morphemic words and clusters ishigher than that of past tense of regular verbs; the influence of gender is insignificantwith the deletion rate of women,41%, slightly lower than man,43%. In the comparison study of Chinese English learners and American English speakers, thestudy shows that the (t/d)-deletion rate of Chinese English learners, among which therate of Tibetan students is17%and Chinese Han students27%, is lower than that ofAmerican English speakers. In the phonological factors, there is obvious discrepancyin the hierarchy of the influence of the preceding segment and following segmentenvironment on (t/d)-deletion. For those Han English learners, the deletion rate orderin preceding segment environment from high to low is: Sibilants or＄(stops),Laterals, Fricatives and Nasals; the order in following segment environment is: K(consonants), Glides, U (liquids), Vowels and Q (pauses). For Tibetan English learners,the deletion rate order in preceding segment environment from high to low is:Fricatives, Sibilants, Laterals,＄(stops) and Nasals; the order in following segmentenvironment is: K (consonants),Vowels, Glides, Q (pauses) and U (liquids). Still theseresult conforms to the fact that the (t/d)-deletion rate of sibilants and stops in thepreceding segment is higher, and consonants delete (t/d) more than vowels in thefollowing segment environment; in the morphological factor groups, because of theaccumulative effect of grammatical rules and phonological rules together with thenegative transfer of mother language, deletion rate of the word-final clusters with (t/d)in the past tense of regular verbs is37%and higher than that of mono-morphemicwords and clusters,23%; the difference of gender is still insignificant, with thedifference of Tibetan students being3%and Han students only1%.Through the present synchronic and diachronic study on the Chinese Han andTibetan English learners and those American English speakers, this paper supports thehypothesis that the (t/d)-deletion is a universal and omnipresent linguisticphenomenon; moreover, it also prefects the relevant theories related to the secondlanguage acquisition such as the language transfer and help to promote the effectiveEnglish teaching and language recognition with the regularity and rules of thisvariable; besides, the existing data about the linguistic variation is enriched because ofthis study, which is beneficial for the relevant study in this field.