An Acoustic Study On Acquisition Of English Segments By Learners Of Shandong Donglai Dialect

SD Dialect has influenced the English phonetic acquisition, which has verified in many studies(e.g., Kong, 2001, 2006, 2008; Kong, 2005; Gao, 2010). This paper focuses on the English segmental study of speakers from Donglai dialect areas by acoustic means. The articulation of English vowels / i /, / ? /, / ? /, / ε / and consonants [p, b, t, d, k, g] will be discussed in this study. Based on the database of AESOP-CASS-SD, by comparing the English speech materials of DL and AM speakers and the DL dialect data to find the differences and similarities between DL and AM speakers and then to discover the positive and negative transfer from DL dialect.From the studies on the influence of Chinese dialects on English pronunciation acquisition, we find that over the past fifty years, research about the influence of dialect on English pronunciation has made some progress, but there are still some problems which can not be ignored. Most researchers of this study mainly talk about their personal experience and teaching experience, and their opinions are almost the same. This is one of the prominent problems. Although the survey shows that the number of empirical researches of this study has appeared a rising trend, and the studies with quantitative research, qualitative research or both the research methods have also increased, the more scientific studies with the use of corpus and acoustic means are not many enough(Zhai & Zhao, 2015: 92). This study does some research on the English phonetic acquisition difficulties of DL speakers on the base of acoustic experiment in order to give some support for English teaching and learning and to improve the English phonetic levels of students in DL dialect areas.According to Qian(2001), SD Dialect can be divided into four districts: Donglai District, Dongwei District, Xiqi District and Xilu District. This study focuses on Donglai District. Based on the geographical location and articulatory features, this study selects the students from YT, LY and ZY which belong to Donglai District as the research targets. There are three research questions in this paper: i) How does Donglai Dialect influence the acquisition of English vowels / i /, / ? /, / ? / and / ε / compared with American speakers? pronunciation? ii) How does Donglai Dialect influence the articulation of the six stops [p, b, t, d, k, g] compared with American speakers? pronunciation? iii) How does the tentative research help the English phonetic teaching in dialect areas?This investigation includes the following contents. Firstly, all the data were chosen from AESOP-CASS-SD. By means of acoustic experiment, this study did research on twelve randomly selected students from YT, LY and ZY, each city with two males and two females and four native speakers from America(two males and two females), to explore their acoustic features. Secondly, this study focuses on the articulation features of the four front vowels / i /, / ? /, / ? /, / ε / by comparing the parameters of F1, F2 and duration and then tries to analyze the VOT and F0 values of the six stops [p, b, t, d, k, g]. At last, to summarize the positive and negative transfer of DL dialect on English phonetic acquisition. The research result shows that the acquisition errors of / ? / and / ε / are mostly caused by the negative transfer from DL dialect. The vowels / i / and / ? / are positively transferred from DL dialect. It also indicates that English learners of DL dialect replace the initial voiced stops [b, d, g] by the voiceless stops [p, t, k] in DL dialect but they exhibit similar features on the production of initial voiceless stops [p?, t?, k?]. This means that influenced by DL dialect, the acquisition of [p?, t?, k?] is positive and the acquisition of [b, d, g] is negative. Based on the study, some advice is given to improve the English phonetic teaching.