A Contrastive Study On The Prosodic Features Of English Tag Questions By Chinese Northeastern EFL Learners And Native Speakers Of American English

Prosodic features,which belong to suprasegmental level,play a crucial role in communication.English and Mandarin Chinese has different prosodic features respectively,and China also has various dialectal regions with their distinctive prosodic features.EFL learners(English as Foreign Language)will somehow transfer the prosodic features of their mother tongue into English prosodic feature learning process.However,present domestic study concerning prosodic features of Chinese EFL learners from different dialectal regions are rare.Based on “Contrastive Study Hypothesis”,the prosodic features of English tag questions by Chinese Northeastern EFL learners and American native speakers are explored.The prosodic features are specifically the stress distribution,phrase segmentation,and intonation pattern.This thesis mainly answered the following three questions:1.What are the prosodic features of English tag questions by Chinese Northeastern EFL learners and American native speakers?2.What differences are found between the prosodic features of English tag questions by Chinese Northeastern EFL learners and American native speakers?3.What are the possible reasons for the existing differences?The speech data of this study are from AESOP-CASS(Asian English Speech Corpus Project-Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)corpus.The speech data of 24 Chinese Northeastern EFL learners from Changchun,Dalian,Harbin and Shenyang(6from each city,half males and half females)are selected and annotated based on“Autosegmental-Metrical Theory”.The prosodic features obtained from the 24 EFL learners are compared with those of 6 American native speakers who speak standard American English(3 males and 3 females).The corpus of the Americans is alsoconstructed by CASS.The fourteen tag questions are classified into constant(“positive + positive”)and reversed(“positive + negative”,“negative + positive”)types.With the aid of Praat software and the combination of ToBI and IViE labeling system,the data are annotated and extracted.Excel was used to make tables,figures and charts for more visualized study.A questionnaire was hand out to explore the external reasons leading to the prosodic differences and finally provide empirical and practical implications for domestic EFL teaching and acquisition.The major findings are listed below:In terms of stress distribution:(1)Chinese Northeastern EFL learners' placement of stress was scattered.However,American native speakers' placement of stress was clear and consistent.(2)In “negative + positive” type of tag questions,most of the EFL learners emphasized the negative word to salient the “negative anchor”,but merely a small number of Americans did the same.(3)EFL learners took all the content words in the tag questions as stress,however,only some of them were taken as stress by Americans.For the grammatical words,the situation was the same.(4)As for the relationship between stress and word class,EFL learners took fewer verbs but more auxiliaries as stress compared with Americans.In terms of phrase segmentation:(1)EFL learners had more phrase segmentations in “negative + positive” type of tag questions.(2)No matter in constant or reversed type of tag questions,EFL learners segmented more but shorter IPs.(3)In “positive + negative” type of tag questions,EFL learners tended to take the two parts of tag questions as one intermediate phrase plus one intonational phrase,whereas Americans took the two parts as two intonational phrases.(4)In “negative +positive” type of tag questions,EFL learners' segmentation patterns were not only more diverse than Americans',but also more diverse than their own segmentation patterns in “positive + negative” type of tag questions.In terms of intonation pattern:(1)The major differences of intonation pattern between EFL learners and Americans occurred at the final boundary of the anchor.Sometimes,EFL learners' and Americans' intonation patterns were reversed.(2)In the tags,Americans' LZ value is low and flat,whereas EFL learners presented more“intrusive” and “sharp” intonation.(3)When the tag questions contain multisyllabic words,EFL learners' manipulation of intonation was not flexible.When Americans used “H*L” or “L*”,EFL learners used “L*HL” or “H*L” correspondingly.(4)EFL learners' manipulation of intonation pattern in “negative + positive” type of tag questions was better than in “positive + negative” type of tag questions.Possible reasons for the differences are discussed under “Prosodic Transfer Hypothesis” and classified into internal and external ones:(1)The internal reasons are the differences between English and Chinese,also the differences between Mandarin Chinese and Northeastern Dialect.(2)The external reasons are insufficient learning and teaching about English prosodic features.The implications of this study have theoretical and practical meaning for domestic research and EFL teaching: theoretically speaking,(1)The result of this study can be used as a reference for the project of AESOP-CASS to explore Chinese Northeastern EFL learners' intonation pattern and create a software which could correct EFL learners' English pronunciation.(2)This study may offer some help for further study on Chinese Northeastern EFL learners' prosodic features.Pedagogically speaking,(1)The importance of teaching and learning English prosodic features should be high-lightened earlier when EFL learners are young.(2)Assistant multimedia and soft-wares like Praat can be adopted in the prosodic teaching process for more visible and audible convenience.