The Experimental Phonetic Study On The Influence Of Phonetic Transfer On Chinese Female EFL Learners' Stress Manifestation In Connected Speech

The stress manifestation in connected speech for EFL learners,especially for Chinese EFL learners,has always been a difficult part,with phonetic transfer as an important influential factor.This paper aims to take a close analysis and discussion on the influence of phonetic transfer on Chinese female EFL learners' stress manifestation in connected speech with experimental phonetic methodology and quantitative research and analysis.2 female American speakers of LI English and 10 female Chinese speakers of L2 English participated in the experiment.10 English sentences and 10 corresponding Chinese translation with one specific word that was a content/lexical word and one that was function/grammatical word were provided.The Chinese participants were asked to read the English sentences and the corresponding Chinese translation,while the native speakers were required to read only the English sentences.All the readings were recorded by high quality recording tools or softwares,and after the collection,all the recordings went to Praat for data analysis.During the data processing and analysis,loudness,duration and pitch were chosen as the parameters to measure the ratio of the content/lexical word and the function/grammatical word in each sentence,in order to acquire the stress manifestation by the participants.The performance of Chinese participants reading English sentences were compared with that of the native speakers and the performance of Chinese participants reading English sentences and Chinese sentences were also compared.At the end,two independent-tests were done.The findings showed that:(1)there is significant difference on English stress manifestation by Chinese female EFL learners and native speakers on intensity ratio and pitch ratio but not on duration parameter,indicating that Chinese participants failed to give a relatively good performance on stress manifestation.(2)there is no significant difference on English stress manifestation and Chinese stress manifestation by Chinese female EFL learners on intensity ratio,pitch ratio and also duration ratio,indicating the possible existence of phonetic negative transfer.At last,implications were given and limitations were presented.