Experiments And Researches Of Chinese Disyllabic Tonal Phonetics Among Cambodia Students Who Learned Chinese In Their Native Language Environment

This thesis takes ten Cambodian students learning Chinese in Cambodian Royal Confucius School as the subjects for traditional tone test and acoustic test,so as to investigate their acquisition of tones in Chinese disyllabic units under the first language circumstances.After statistic and acoustic analysis of related data,the tendency of acquisition errors of tones in Chinese disyllabic units is figured out,and some pedagogical suggestions are put forward.In the introduction,clarify motivations,review of related literature in China and abroad,significance and purpose of the study.Chapter One is the research design part,in which research subjects,materials,procedure and data analysis methods are presented.Chapter Two focuses on the traditional tone test on subjects,which is composed of two subtests,namely,tone perception test and tone production test,evaluating the subjects’ implicit and explicit tonal knowledge respectively.The test results show that:(1)The orders of acquisition difficulty of disyllabic units in both subtests are mostly similar,and they rank in descreasing order of difficulty as follows: "the third tone+X","the second tone+X","the first tone+X",and "the fourth tone+X".(2)In the two subtests of traditional tone test,both syllables of the disyllabic units show similar patterns of errors across the four types of combinations,with a higher rate of errors on the first syllables.(3)Cambodian students perform better in tone production test than in tone perception test;namely their pronunciation ability is better than recognition.Chapter Three focuses on the acoustic test on subjects.With tools of experimental phonetics,the disyllabic units produced by Cambodian students are measured in three dimensions: tone contour,register and values,so as to better capture their production errors and detailed performance.Results are as follows:(1)tone contour: generally,most contours are distorted from the correct ones;the contour patterns of the first tone and the third tone are roughly the same;the contourof the second tone descends gently in the beginning,stays flat in the middle,and ascends very subtly in the end;the third tone contour has similar problems,with a very limited extent of descent and ascent in the pronunciation process.However,Cambodian students have a good command of the fourth tone contours.Interestingly,students usually have a lower beginning pitch in the first syllable of disyllabic units than the second.(2)register: Cambodian students generally tend to keep a low register in tone production.The absolute disparity of register between Cambodian students and native Chinese is very large.(3)tone values: Cambodian students’ tone values are generally low,and this is even more obvious in the production of the first tone,the second tone and the third tone.Chapter Four is about pedagogical suggestions.Taking into account the acquisition errors of Cambodian students,we put forward such suggestions as explicit teaching,music assisted teaching,and contrastive teaching.Specific tone practice materials are also provided.The present research aims to capture the picture of Cambodian students’ Chinese tone learning from an investigation of their acquisition of disyllabic tonal units,also to provide learning strategies for them,and moreover to bear implications on Chinese tone teaching practice in Cambodia.This thesis further enriches the studies of Chinese tone acquisition as a foreign language under the first language circumstances.