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Production And Perception Of English Lexical Stress By Changsha Dialect Speakers:An Acoustic Study

Posted on:2018-02-20Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:H YangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2335330542456719Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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This study investigates the production and perception of English lexical stress by Changsha dialect speakers.English is a stress language and English lexical stress involves four suprasegmental acoustic correlates,fundamental frequency(FO),duration,intensity and vowel quality,inappropriate use of any correlate could affect the production and perception of English lexical stress.Changsha dialect is a tonal language and its major acoustic cue is F0,however,duration plays a more important role in Changsha dialect.This study aims to compare the acoustic features of FO,duration and intensity in the production and perception of English lexical stress by Changsha dialect speakers with those by native English speakers.There are two research questions in this study:1)Do Changsha dialect speakers of English and English native speakers use FO,duration,and intensity in the perception and production of English stress?2)If they do,is there any difference between these two groups?And how they differentiate in using the three acoustic cues?There are production experiment and perception experiment in the study,and 32 subjects participated in the experiment,they are divided into two groups,16 Changsha dialect speakers of English and 16 native English speakers.Each group has 8 males and 8 females.Participants in the Changsha dialect group are all freshman from Hunan University,and their average age is 18 years old.All the students'English scores in the College Entrance Examination are above 130.Participants in the native English group are all from America and their average age is 25 years old.All the participants are free of hearing and language problems.Results show that:1)both Changsha dialect speakers and native English speakers have used F0,duration and intensity in their production and perception of English lexical stress;2)there are some differences in the weighting of the acoustic cues between Changsha dialect speakers and native English speakers.Firstly,in the production experiment,Changsha dialect speakers rely more on F0 and duration,and less on intensity than native English speakers.There is a significant difference in the use of F0 and duration,while not significant for intensity.The acoustic cue weighting of Changsha dialect speakers is duration>pitch>intensity,and the ranking order for native English group is duration>intensity>F0.Secondly,in the perception experiment,Changsha dialect speakers also rely more on FO and duration,and less on intensity than native English speakers.There is a significant difference in the use of FO and duration,while not significant for intensity.Besides,the acoustic cue weighting of Changsha dialect speakers is duration>pitch>intensity,and the ranking order of native English group is FO>intensity>duration.
Keywords/Search Tags:English lexical stress, suprasegmental, acoustic correlates
PDF Full Text Request
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