Acoustic Features Of English Weak Forms And Mandarin Neutral Tones: A Comparative Study

Phonetic changes are common phenomena in many languages.When we speak languages,the sounds are not uttered separately,but continuously,hence resulting in phonetic changes of various levels.Mandarin neutral tone,as an important prosodic phenomenon,plays an important role in the phonology and phonetics of modern Chinese.Similarly,English weak form,as an essential feature of English prosody,has been regarded as fundamental basis for its typical stress-timed rhythms.Though both are the typical phonetic changes of connected speech in modern linguistics,not much attention has been given to explore their similarities or differences in acoustic features.This thesis reports an experimental study so as to address the following questions:1)What are the acoustic features of English weak forms compared to their strong forms?2)What are the acoustic features of Mandarin neutral tones compared to their normal tones?3)What are the acoustic similarities and differences between English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones?The experimental materials consist of English weak forms realized in 23 high frequent function words embedded in carrier words and sentences and Mandarin neutral tones realized in 7 types of prosodic words and phrases.The Mandarin data were read by 4 national standard Mandarin news announcers from local radio station and recorded in the phonetics lab in Jiangsu University of Science and Technology,while the English data were read by 2 English RP phoneticians and recorded in the Phonetic Science Laboratory of Cambridge University.All the recorded data were then annotated and analyzed acoustically via Praat 5400 and statistically via Excel 2007 and SPSS18.0.The main findings from the data analyses are as follows.1.Acoustic features of English weak forms:1)For duration,specifically,in connected speech,the mean duration of English weak forms accounts for 49.63% of that in their strong forms and the mean duration of function words spoken by English RP speakers is 159 ms.Also,the vowel reductions have shown the similar results,the mean vowel duration of English weak forms accounts for 50.91% compared to their strong forms.2)For intensity,specifically,in connected speech,the ratio of English weak forms accounts for 70.38% of that in their strong forms.3)For pitch,specifically,in connected speech,the ratio of English weak forms is 72.54% of that in their strong forms.Also,the mean value of pitch ranges in English weak forms is 133.27 Hz,which is quite huge.2.Acoustic features of Mandarin neutral tones:1)For duration,specifically,in connected speech,the duration of Mandarin neutral tones accounts for 60.97% of that in fully realized forms and the mean duration of Mandarin neutral tones spoken by Chinese standard speakers is 230 ms.As to the vowel reductions,the mean vowel duration of Mandarin neutral tones accounts for 59.50% compared to their normal tones.2)For intensity,specifically,in connected speech,the ratio of Mandarin neutral tones accounts for 77.5% of that in their normal tones.3)For pitch,specifically,in connected speech,the ratio of Mandarin neutral tones accounts for 75.17% of that in their normal tones.Also,the mean value of pitch ranges in Mandarin neutral tones is 50.23 Hz,which is quite stable.3.Similarities and differences of English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones in acoustic features:1)For duration,the durational values in both English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones are reduced greatly compared to their durational values in fully realized strong forms.But there are more reductions in English weak forms than those in Mandarin neutral tones.Moreover,more durational variations are found in English weak forms than those in Mandarin neutral tones.All the differences above are largely due to the differences of morphological and phonetic structures of the two languages,i.e.,English is generally multi-syllabic while Mandarin is uniformly mono-syllabic.2)For intensity,the intensity values in both English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones are significantly reduced compared to their intensity values in fully realized strong forms.But there are also more reductions in English weak forms than those in Mandarin neutral tones.3)For pitch,the pitch values in both English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones are significantly reduced compared to their pitch values in fully realized strong forms as well.There are still more reductions in English weak forms than those in Mandarin neutral tones.As for the pitch ranges,compared with their normal tones,there are more variations in English weak forms than those in Mandarin neutral tones,which also predicts that the English pitch system is more flexible than that in Chinese pitch system.The above findings have shed lights on the teaching of English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones as second language in and outside China.There are reductions in duration,intensity and pitch both in English weak forms and Mandarin neutral tones compared to their strong forms and there are more reductions in English weak forms than those in Mandarin neutral tones.Chinese students habitually pronounce English words louder and lengthen the word a bit to make words cadenced and rhythmic in the process of learning English.However,the statistical result shows that it is not in accord with the common practice of English RP speakers.In fact,the pronunciation of English is more concise.Also,for Chinese EFL learners,they should pay more attention to the changes of pitch in English weak forms used to distinguish different emotions,while foreign learners should pay more attention to the changes of 4 different tones in Mandarin when learning Chinese.This study also indicates the possible obstacles to the second language acquisition and how to reduce the effect of negative transfers from their mother tongues.It provides a new perspective for Chinese teaching and English teaching and provides some methodological and practical significance for future researchers.