Investigation Of Tone Patterns In Expressing Certainty In The Speech By The Chinese Learners

The present study investigates the common features in tone patterns in the Chinese learners’ speech when expressing degrees of certainty. By a comparison with the tone patterns produced by native speakers, this research analyzes the similarities and differences of the tone patterns by the Chinese learners. A further discussion is given on how the differences in the tone patterns by the Chinese learners could affect the communicative meanings they convey in spoken discourse when degrees of certainty are involved.In order to have a comprehensive analysis of the tone patterns chosen by the Chinese learners, the speech of the Chinese subjects were recorded by completing two tasks in the experiment: reading short controlled dialogues and reading conversations from the American TV series The Bing Bang Theory. The target materials collected were labeled and analyzed acoustically with the software Prosodic Pro in order to obtain large quantities of data on the prosodic characteristics of both the Chinese learners and native speakers.The results of this study reveal that the Chinese learners are able to use the basic falling tone to express an absolute certainty. Their choices of the falling tones are not only based on the language cues, but heavily rely on the context and communicative purpose of the conversation. However, there are significant differences in the realization of the falling patterns produced by the Chinese learners and English native speakers in the expression of a higher degree of certainty. The pitch ranges in their falling contours are much narrower, which are ended with a flat tail. In some of the falling contours, the endpoints are not vey low enough, often in the middle of the whole pitch range, high above the speakers’ baseline. Moreover, the Chinese subjects tend to persistently use the falling tones and lack a variety of intonation contours in most cases, even when a lower degree of certainty or reservation meanings are denoted. Their choices of tone patterns do not contribute to the expression of a variety of modality meanings from certainty to uncertainty.The misuse of intonation contours and the problems in their falling tone patterns may affect the massage transmitted and lead to misunderstandings in the expression of modality in their communication.