A Study Of Vowel Transfer From L2(Chinese) To L3(English) In Xinjiang Uyghur Students Studying At Han Schools

Language transfer is one of the most important branches in modern linguistics. It happens during the process of language acquisition process in usual. There are three common directions of language transfer: positive transfer, negative transfer and zero transfer. TLA is a newly developed field that arouses a lot of scholars’ attention both in China and abroad. Xinjiang is located in the northwest of China and has a large population. It is one of five autonomous minority regions where lives most of the Uyghur minorities. With the spread of the co-schooling policy between Han nationality and ethnic minorities, a great many Uyghur students began to speak Chinese like Han majorities in recent years. Since English is an international language, a number of Uyghur students begin to take an interest in English learning and go abroad.This paper is mainly used to analyze the vowel transfer from the second language Chinese to the third language English. The theoretical based are language transfer theory, new transfer theory and contrastive analysis. The methodology of experimental phonology is adopted in this paper. The tongue positions of vowels on 20 Uyghur students studying at Han schools are drawn by Praat-Win32 software that can express the F1 and F2 values. In this research, the English learning of Uyghur students studying at Han schools is influenced by both Uyghur language and Chinese language since they use Chinese in school education. On the contrary, the English learning of Uyghur students studying at Uyghur schools is mainly influenced by Uyghur language as they are used to using Uyghur language at school. Therefore, if there are differences between Uyghur students studying at Han schools and Uyghur schools, it can be concluded that Chinese language(L2) has language transfer to English acquisition(L3).This paper mainly adopts both quantitative and qualitative approach to explore the vowel transfer from L2(Chinese) to L3(English) on Uyghur students studying at Han schools. The main findings are listed as following:(1) the vowel transfer from L2(Chinese) to English do exist in the pronunciation of Uyghur students studying at Han schools.(2) Chinese vowels [a] and [u] contain negative transfers to English vowels [a] and [u]. Chinese vowel [i] has a positive transfer to English vowel [i]. Chinese vowel [?] contains a negative transfer to English [?]. Chinese vowels [y], [?], [?] [o] have zero transfers to English vowels since there are no corresponding vowels in English phonetic systems. English vowels [e, ?, ?] also received zero transfers from Chinese vowels since there are also no corresponding vowels in the phonetic system of Chinese language.