A Study Of The Acquisition Of Affricate And Fricative By Spanish-speaking Students

The consonant is an important part in the phonetic system,and is also one of the difficulties in learning Chinese.In this thesis,we study the Chinese affricate and fricative of Spanish-speaking students from three language levels,the elementary,the intermediate and the advanced level.Based on the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis,Inter-language Theory and Error Analysis Theory,this thesis analyses the Spanish-speaking students' acquisition of the Chinese affricates and fricatives by using the methods such as perceptual listening analysis and acoustics pattern analysis.First of all,on the basis of the previous studies,we compare the consonant system of Chinese and Spanish by using the method of the Contrastive Analysis hypothesis,this thesis is aimed to find out the similarities and differences between the two consonant systems from the aspects such as the manners of pronunciation,the places of articulation and the positions in syllable,so as to predict the errors of the Spanish-speaking students may have in the acquisition of Chinese consonant.By summarizing previous researches and the comparing of the two consonant systems,this thesis speculates the errors of the consonant that the Spanish-speaking students mainly have,which are apical and palatal affricative and voiceless fricatives.Secondly,perceptually listening analyzes each single sample,and then measure the language error according to the statistics from the early,middle and senior level.Then we measure the affricate and fricative acoustic parameters of the three subjects by the sound analysis software Praat.The research on the affricative mainly uses the two acoustic parameters,which are voice onset time(VOT)and occlusion length(GPA)to study the accuracy of pronunciation of the three groups.Then we investigate the difference and the individual stability of the three groups by value standard of VOT with Excel spreadsheet.The experimental results show that,with the increase of the learning time,the students of senior level acquire c[ts'],z[ts]and q[t(?)'].But the affricative j[t(?)]and ch[t(?)']which the primary group has basically acquired,appear accuracy decline in senior level.And the accuracy of pronunciation of affricative j[t(?)]is not high,mainly reflects that they cannot master the distinctive feature of "aspirated-unaspirated".The study about the fricatives is mainly from the two acoustic parameters,the center frequency and lower frequency.The experimental results show that the Spanish-speaking students can acquire sh[(?)]and x[(?)]from the primary stage,and also maintain to the advanced stage;but the fricative s[s]which is influenced by the negative transfer of mother tongue,so learning s[s]can not be successful while acquiring until the advanced stage.Finally,based on the data from the acoustic experiment combined with the sonogram and identification,the thesis identifies the causes of these errors,which are mainly from the lingual transfer,intralingual transfer and the limitation of teaching.The analysis of the effect of interlingual transfer is mainly from mother language Spanish and their first foreign language English.The negative transfer is mainly manifested in which the students pronounce ch[t(?)']as the intermediary tone between ch[t(?)']and q[t(?)],as well as s[s]and x[(?)]have appeared in the tongue after the partial.In addition,the first foreign language English influences on the error which are the pronunciations j[t(?)]and zh[t(?)]as[d3],q[t(?)']?c[ts']and ch[ts']as[t].Effects of intralingual transfer are listed from three aspects,affricates,fricative and between the affricates and the fricatives.Intralingual transfer of errors is mainly manifested in the feature of "aspirated-unaspirated" and the confusion of articulation.Teaching limitations are analyzed from the two aspects,which are the curriculum and the teaching environment.Then through the analysis of the causes of errors of the proposed teaching suggestions,this thesis mainly put forward specific suggestions from the three aspects of the aspirated and unaspirated sound,palatal and alveolar consonant.In the end of the conclusion of this paper,it points out the deficiency and the research problems which are to be solved,such as expanding the scope of quantity of voice samples and doing the study of different aspects of the sounds,such as vowel and tone,and selecting more professional recording software and speech experiment software.