OT Analysis Of Acquisition Of English Consonant Clusters By Chinese EFL Learners

The contrasting difference existing in English and Mandarin Chinese phonological system results in the divergent articulatory production between them,especially for the consonant clusters. English is a language which permits consonant clustering, whereas in Mandarin Chinese, there is no consonant cluster. Therefore,Chinese EFL learners are easily to commit errors in the production of consonant clusters. This thesis attempts to examine and give a tentative elucidation in the production errors of English consonant clusters in onset and coda positions by Mandarin Chinese EFL learners within Optimality Theory framework.The focus of this investigation is to find out: 1. What types of modifications do the Chinese EFL learners adopt in the production of onset and coda consonant clusters in monosyllabic and polysyllabic English words? 2. What linguistic constraints affect the different modifications? 3. How does constraint ranking explain the different modifications in the production of onset and coda consonant clusters in English words(monosyllabic and polysyllabic) ?In order to solve the three research questions, an empirical research was implemented among 25 high school students. The subjects’ pronunciations of 48 words with onset and coda consonant clusters were recorded and analyzed. Based on the research results, the author finds out that there are three types of modifications that the Chinese EFL learners frequently made in their pronunciation: epenthesis,deletion and substitution. For the epenthesis and deletion errors, markedness constraints are ranked highly whereas faithfulness constraints are ranked relatively lowly, because in cases of epenthesis and deletion, the well-formedness of outputs in Chinese is more important than the number of phonemes in the original syllable.Whereas, for substitution error, faithfulness constraints ranked relatively highly since the retention of input-output intact is important.