On Tianshui EFL Learners’ Acquisition Of English Fricatives:An Experimental Phonetics Perspective

Tianshui city is located in the Southeast of Gansu province,whose dialect has been regarded as a sub-branch of Central Plains Mandarin.The distinctive phonetic feature of Tianshui dialect lies in the fact that some phonemes existing in Tianshui dialect are totally missing from Chinese Mandarin such as fricative sounds[v]and[z],which,however,exist in English sound system.The research of a great many scholars has been confined to Tianshui dialect itself,while only few touch on the subject of the influences of Tianshui dialect on the acquisition of English speech sounds.Therefore,this thesis will focus on exploring the influences of Tianshui dialect on the acquisition of English fricatives.This thesis,by employing Language Transfer Theory,Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis as well as Fricative Pattern Theory,aims to find out how Tianshui dialect influences the acquisition of English fricatives.The research questions are enumerated just as follows;1)What are the representations of fricative space in Tianshui dialect and English?2)What are the similarities and differences of English fricatives articulated by Tianshui EFL learners and English native speakers in the framework of Fricative Pattern Theory?Based on these,what are the most problematic fricative phonemes for Tianshui EFL learners?3)For Tianshui EFL learners,what are the reasons for their pronunciation errors of English fricatives?This research adopts the method of field investigation so as to find out the problems encountered by Tianshui EFL learners in the process of acquiring English fricatives.At first,the example words(see appendix)produced by English native speakers and Tianshui EFL learners will be recorded,which will be analyzed later to plot the fricative space diagrams.The fricative space diagram of English and that of Tianshui dialect will be compared in order to predict EFL learners’ possible problems in the process of acquiring English fricatives.Then the fricative space diagrams of English by native speakers and Tianshui EFL learners will be compared so that the most problematic phonemes will be found out,and some of the previous hypotheses will be verified.At last,the reasons for Tianshui EFL learners’ fricative pronunciation errors will be explored.Based on the previous analysis and discussion,the research results are just as follows:1)From the point of the fricative space representation,the phonemes in Tianshui dialect are generally more diffuse than those in English.2)The study found that Tianshui EFL learners usually realize the dental phonemes[θ]and[δ]as[s]and[z]respectively.In addition,[h]and[3]are also two other problematic sounds for Tianshui EFL learners.3)Negative transfer has been the primary cause of Tianshui EFL learners’fricative pronunciation errors.With the employment of Fricative Pattern Theory,this thesis reveals how Tianshui dialect influences the acquisition of English fricatives,which can be used as a kind of reference for English phonetic teaching and learning.In the meanwhile,the feasibility and validity of the relatively new theory have been verified.