An Acoustic Study Of Cantonese Speakers' Production Of English Lexical Stress

English lexical stress mainly involves fundamental frequency, duration and intensity. Lack of a good mastery of any of these correlates could interfere with the perception and production of the English lexical stress. L2 English learners exhibit deviations from native speech production at both segmental and suprasegmental levels. The'not native-like'performances are generally attributed to L1 transfer. As a tonal language, Chinese dialects mainly use FO to distinguish different tones. The prosodic differences between native language and target language bring difficulties for L2 learners. However, the research on how Mandarin dialects affect the learners in producing English lexical stress is extremely scarce. This thesis is an acoustic study of Cantonese speakers'production of English lexical stress, specifically, it addresses the research questions below:1. What are the acoustic correlates used by the learners speaking Cantonese to indicate lexical stress in English?2. How are Cantonese speakers different from English speakers in terms of their use of these features?3. To which degree can Cantonese speakers' pattern of acoustic correlate production be explained by the structure of their native language phonology?The current study utilized the methodology of Beckman (1986) and Fry (1955,1958). The stimuli was 7 pairs of bisyllabic words that have a noun form and a verb form.The participants included 10 native English speakers and 10 Cantonese English speakers and they were asked to read the 14 words for twice. On this basis, the author analyzed all 560 tokens on Praat.On the basis of an analysis, the author obtained the findings below:1) both native English speakers and Cantonese English speakers use the three cues as major means to signal stress, but in very different ways.2) Native English speakers relied on duration more than on intensity and pitch, whereas Cantonese English speakers utilized pitch to the most but did not use duration and intensity as a stress cue that much. For the utilization of the acoustic cue F0, Cantonese English speakers employed FO to a greater extent than native English speakers.3) As Cantonese is a tone language which has six tones, Cantonese are very sensitive to pitch varieties when producing stress in English. For the phonetic correlate duration, on the contrary, Cantonese English speakers employed duration to a less extent than native English speakers, due to theinfluence of the rule of final lengthening in Cantonese. For the effect of stress patterns on Cantonese English speakers'lexical stress production, interestingly, they employed the correlate duration to a greater extent in verbs than in nouns. Because Cantonese speakers tend to lengthen all final syllables in Cantonese words and this was transferred into their English learning.The results of this study suggested that despite the fact that Cantonese speakers could use all three correlates to distinguish English stressed syllables from unstressed syllables not only in nouns but also in verbs, they are not capable of controlling all three acoustic cues in a way that is the same with native English speakers due to the effect of their native tonal system. Therefore, Chinese English teachers and English learners should pay more attention to the accurate use of acoustic correlates in the production of English lexical stress. English learning.The results of this study suggested that despite the fact that Cantonese English speakers could use all three correlates to distinguish stressed syllables from unstressed syllables not only in nouns but also in verbs, they are not capable of controlling all three acoustic cues in a way that is the same with native English speakers due to the effect of their native tonal system. Therefore, Chinese English teachers and English learners should pay more attention to the accurate use of acoustic correlates in the production of English lexical stress.