An Experimental Study Of The Cantonese EFL Learners’ Intonation Patterns In Their Reading Of English Subject Subordinate Clauses

This thesis aims to make a contrastive analysis of intonation patterns of both Cantonese EFL learners and native English speakers.With English subject subordinate clauses as the study object,the research attempts to find out intonation differences between Cantonese EFL learners and native English speakers when they read aloud,and further provides foreign accents with some evidences.The data collection and data analyzing procedures of this research is made up of following steps: first,sentences which have been recorded should be designed;second,record data.Selecting instruments for recording and analyzing is included;finally,data are organized and analyzed.The data are collected by the software named Recorder,and then the audio files are filtered by Audacity and later processed using Praat.The thesis mainly deals with three questions: first,what are the characteristics of intonation patterns of native English speakers when they read English subject subordinate clauses? Second,what are the characteristics of intonation patterns of Cantonese EFL learners when they read English subject subordinate clauses? Finally,why Cantonese EFL learners carry some different intonation characteristics from that of native English speakers when they read English subject subordinate clauses? The findings are revealed from four aspects.First,as for the utterances durations,it takes Cantonese EFL learners more time to finishing reading the same sentence than native English speakers because Cantonese speakers are inclined to pauses within words.However,sometimes pauses cannot be noticed in short sentences,and Cantonese speakers may finish reading sentences faster because they pronounce incomplete syllables.Second,in terms of the intonation groups,Cantonese EFL learners cut more intonation groups than native speakers do.And it proves that they have their preference when they choose a way to cut intonation groups.Third,when the distributions of stresses are discussed,Cantonese EFL learners are conscious of the presence or absence of stressed but they are unable to correctly place them.Finally,the overall pitch pattern slopes of Cantonese EFL learners are more complicated than that of native English speakers.And they differ in nucleus locations and type of nuclear tones.