An Acoustic Study On English Nasal Consonants Produced By Dalian English Learners

From the point of view of experimental phonetics,this thesis explores the acoustic features of English nasal consonants produced by Dalian English learners.The research materials are from AESOP-CASS(Asian English Speech Corpus Project-Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)which is mainly for the research of the pronunciation deviations of English learners in Chinese dialect area.In this research,14 English words containing 3 nasal consonants read by Dalian 50 speakers(25 males,25 females)and American native speakers 16(8 males,8 females)are selected as research materials.The research materials are annotated with the acoustic software Praat,and the data is extracted using social statistics software SPSS and Excel.And finally the experimental results are obtained.This research aims to answer the following three questions:1.What are the features of English nasal consonants produced by DELs and ANSs?2.What are the deviations of DELs from ANSs in production of English nasal consonants?3.What are the influences of mother tongue on English nasal consonants acquisition of DELs?By comparing the nasal consonants produced by Dalian English learners and American native speakers in terms of formants,bandwidths and durations,the nasal consonants features of Dalian English Learners and American native speakers,the nasal consonants deviations of Dalian English learners and the influences of mother tongue have been presented.The experimental results are as follows:1.The features of English nasal consonants produced by Dalian English speakers and American native speakers are as follows:(1)The features of English nasal consonants by DELs: English nasal consonants which are in final position have the higher F2 and F3 values.B2 and B3 values of nasal consonants produced by DELs all vary in 300~1000Hz,and have large fluctuation degree.Nasal consonants by DELs have higher B3 values in final position./n/ and /?/ both have the biggest duration values when they are in final position,and specifically when they are in low vowel environment of final position,however,/m/ has the shortest duration when it is in low vowel environment of final position.The experimental data shows that influenced by vowel types before nasal consonants,the duration values of nasal finals by DELs have obvious difference,but they are irregular.(2)The features of English nasal consonants by ANSs: F2 values of /n/ are higher than that of /m/ and /?/./m/ and /n/ both have the biggest F3 values in medial position.Nasal finals /n/ and /?/ both have the biggest B1 values when they are in final position which has adjacent mid vowel,however,/n/ and /?/ both have the smallest B1 values when they are in final position which has adjacent high vowel./n/ which is in final position has smaller B1 values than /m/ and /?/ which are also in final position.B3 of /m/ and /n/ which are in final position by ANSs have the biggest values when /m/ and /n/ has adjacent low vowel.All nasal consonants by ANSs have the longest durations in final position and have the shortest durations in medial position.When nasal consonants by ANSs are in final positions,the duration values of /?/ are higher than that of /m/ and /n/.2.In terms of the deviations of English nasal consonants produced by Dalian English speakers,their performance is as follows: The tongue position of DELs is lower especially when /m/ is in mid vowel environment of final position,/n/ is in initial position and high vowel environment final position,and /?/ is in mid vowel environment of final position.When /m/ is in initial position,high vowel and low vowel environment of final position,DELs have more forward tongue position while the alveolar /n/ which is in medial position is pronounced,DELs have more backward tongue position.When Dalian English learners pronounce nasal consonants,the falling degree of soft palate is not obvious,even has different degrees of lifting tendency.The nasal consonants pronunciations of Dalian English learners are influenced by neighboring vowel and have co-articulation phenomenon to some degree.The B1 and B3 values of Dalian speakers are higher when nasal consonants are in individual positions.The mean durations of nasal consonants by DELs have not salient deviation,under the circumstance of not considering positions of nasal consonants in syllable but the durations of nasal consonants by DELs and ANSs have obvious disparity under the circumstance of considering the positions of nasal consonants in syllable.3.The mother tongue transfer on English nasal consonants of DELs:(1)DELs have lower tongue position and the falling degrees of soft palate are not salient even soft palate has a tendency of lifting soft palate influenced by mother tongue when producing English nasal consonants.The lack of /m/ which is in final position and /n/ which is medial position in mother tongue exerts negative transfer on tongue advancement of DELs when DELs produce these sounds in English.(2)B1 and B3 values of /n/ which is in medial position by DELs in English have deviations,due to the lack of /n/ which is medial position in mother tongue.Mother tongue exerts negative transfer on B3 values of /m/ which is in initial position and /?/ which is in final position by DELs.(3)There are significant differences on duration values of /m/ which is in final position and duration values of /?/ which is in medial position by DELs and ANSs in English,which can be explained by the lack of these sounds in mother tongue.Duration values of /n/ which is in initial position by DELs are lower than that by ANS,influenced by the negative transfer of mother tongue.The duration values of /n/ which is in final position also have negative transfer of mother tongue.This research results can be applied in nasal consonants learning of Dalian English learners and at the same time,it can provide reference for studying the influences of dialect speech sounds on English pronunciation.In foreign language teaching,foreign language teachers should pay attention to the similarities and differences between the mother tongue and the target language,and try to avoid the negative transfer of the mother tongue,learn to use the positive transfer of the mother tongue,and pay special attention to the nuances between the two languages,because the smaller the difference,the more easy to be ignored.The results of this study can also provide some ideas for pronunciation correction.