Acoustic Features Of English Intonation By U-tsang Tibetan EFL Learners

Intonation is an indispensable element in verbal communication,because it not only conveys information and eliminates grammatical ambiguity,but also expresses speakers' mood and attitude.The acoustic features of L2 learners' intonation can objectively reflect the intonation features of them,and provide reference for them to improve their intonation pronunciation.This thesis will study the acoustic features of English intonation by U-Tsang Tibetan speakers on the basis of the3 Ts theory(tonality,tonicity and tone).By analyzing the ten declarative sentences produced by 18(9 female,9 male)UTsang Tibetan EFL learners and 8(4 female,4 male)native speakers of American English,this study has the following findings:(1)In terms of tonality: Pause and pitch reset are the main boundary indicators for both Tibetan EFL learners and native English speakers,while Tibetan EFL learners tend to use more pauses and fewer pitch resets as boundaries than native English speakers,and female Tibetan EFL learners use fewer pauses and more pitch resets than male learners.With regard to the number and length of intonation phrases(IPs),both female learners and male learners tend to use more and shorter IPs than native speakers.(2)In terms of tonicity: Learners use more unmarked nuclei than native English speakers do.For both unmarked nucleus and marked nucleus,learners often put them on a wide range of words and syllables,even sometimes on different syllables of the same word,making its nucleus seem scattered.In addition,compared with native speakers,learners have a lower proportion of marked nuclei on lexical words and a higher proportion on grammatical words,thus more often place nucleus on improper words.With regard to the comparison between female Tibetan EFL learners and male Tibetan EFL learners,there is no obvious difference in tonality.(3)In terms of tone: Tibetan EFL learners are basically able to use various tone patterns properly,especially for nucleus tones.However,for the tone patterns of head,learners use a quite high proportion of level tones to head,making its utterances sound flat.In addition,influenced by their L1 Tibetan,a tone language,learners tend to pronounce every syllable clearly,so there are many stresses in their utterances.Male learners tend to use more level tones and more stresses in their utterances than females do.Such findings about the acoustics features of English intonation by Tibetan EFLlearners will provide reference for more targeted English teaching and improving the automatic speech recognition rate of a system which deals with speakers with a dialect background.