Analysis On The Output Of Polyphone In Spontaneous Speech By High-level L2 Learners

The polyphone characters have always been the most difficult problems in Chinese Teaching because of its’ complex relations of form,pronunciation and meaning.At present,the domestic research on polyphone characters is quite abundant,but there is still a large research space in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language.In the past,the study of polyphone characters mostly used questionnaires to understand the polyphonec character acquisition of international students.No one has studied the use of polyphone characters in spontaneous speech,so the author investigated the output of polyphone characters in spontaneous speech by L2 learners.The author’s test subjects are high-level Chinese users,who come from the English culture circle and the Chinese character culture circle.This essay aims to investigate whether the frequency of output of polyphone characters by high-level L2 learners is different from native speakers,and whether different language and cultural backgrounds affect the frequency of polyphone characters and the level of phonetic terms,false pronunciation.What’s the causes of false pronunciation?We transcribe and proofread the colloquial materials of 4 high-level L2 learners with English culture background and 4 high-level L2 learners under Chinese characters culture background at first,and select 33,355 words each team to form a spoken language corpus with a total of 66,710 words.Later,we make a comprehensive comparison of the polyphone characters included in Modern ChineseⅠ and Mandarin Training Test Guide,and select in total of 381 polyphone characters to form the commonly used polyphone List.This table is used as a standard for screening,to obtain the output Polyphone by L2 learners.At the same time,we organize the characters with more than one pronunciation from The Graded Chinese Syllables,Characters and Words for Application of Teaching Chinese to the Speakers of Other Languages(National Standard),and obtain 137 polyphone characters that should be mastered by L2 learners,and form the Levels of Polyphone List for comparison.The investigation results show as follow:The high-frequency characters of native speakers and L2 speakers are the same,but the specific frequencies are different.Words used by L2 learners significantly less than native speakers are caused by insufficient use of polyphonic item.Those used by L2 learners higher than Native speakers are influenced by the spoken style.The greater the difference,the more frequent the spoken language usage,the more obvious the spoken language features.On the comparison of Chinese character culture circle and English culture circle,we find out that the output of polyphone characters in Chinese character culture group is slightly more than that in English culture group,but the cumulative frequency of polyphone characters in the two groups is very close.The ultra-low frequency characters in the Chinese character culture circle are significantly more than the English culture circle,but the intermediate frequency characters in the English culture circle are significantly higher than the Chinese character culture circle.In the ultra-high frequency and high frequency groups,the number of polyphone words in the two groups is the same,while the specific frequency is different.In terms of pronunciation items level,the most commonly used words for both sides are popular grades,which is not much difference.But in the intermediate,advanced,and advanced appendices,the use of Chinese character culture circle learners is significantly higher than that of English.Different language and cultural backgrounds do have differences in the usage of using polyphone characters.Meanwhile,there are40%-50% output polyphone characters in both of the two sets don’t belong to Levels of Polyphone List,and there are several polyphone characters exceed the requirements in both sides.It is noteworthy that the use ratio of "这、那" in their written style and spoken style has internal consistency among individuals,which is related to personal pragmatic habits.In terms of the false pronunciation,we find that false pronunciation rate in the Chinese character culture circle is more average,which is lower than 15%,while the English culture circle is polarized.The negative transfer of the mother tongue causes the most misreads,but causes different types of false pronunciation;the Chinese character culture circle has more errors in tongue-twisting and posterior rhyme sounds,and fewer tonal errors;the English culture circle is mostly tonal errors.While in tonal errors,both groups have the same regularity: first tone changes to down tone;second tone changes to first tone;third tone changes to first and second tone.Fourth tone changes the most,low-drop tone mostly.There are 11 reasons for false pronunciation:affected by the strong pronunciation terms,by the small degree of difference in pronunciation and meaning,by the phonological part of Chinese characters,by the mismatch of the pronunciation and meaning of the words,"slip of the tongue",affected by the adjacent morphemes,the centralization of vowels,learner’s failure to learn the usage of the multi-pronunciation item,affected by special usage,affected by the change of accented sounds and changed by standard sounds,affected by the social environment.Polyphone characters false pronunciation by high-level L2 learners are also common among native speakers,including "模、血、片、强、尽、兴",etc.The mispronunciation is also consistent with the misreading of native speakers.At last,combined with the analysis of the causes of false pronunciation,we puts forward suggestions for the teaching of polyphone characters of high-level L2 learners.First,we need to strengthen phonetics teaching and lay a solid foundation.For common tonal errors,tonal contrast exercises can be designed according to the misreading rules found in this essay;targeted errors are taught to students with specific language backgrounds.Second,morpheme analysis should be used to carefully analyze polyphone characters with small differences in pronunciation and meaning items to help students establish phonetic and semantic items.Third,the polyphone characters beyond requirement should be appropriately supplied to meet the needs of high-level L2 learners.Fourth,the rate of recurrence and the practice of polyphone characters in weaker pronunciation terms need to be increased.