Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Interlanguage phonology'

The phenomenon of the foreign accent has long been of interest to linguists, second language teachers, language pathologists, and others. This study investigated the influence of certain factors on the degree of foreign accent in learners of English as a second language. Specifically, it examined the effects of two linguistic contexts, age of arrival in Canada, years spent in Canada, and native language on the accents of 29 subjects at an advaced level of English language study. The degree of accent was rated on a five-point scale by 13 native speaker judges. It was hypothesized that non-native speakers of English would exhibit greater degree of foreign accent when reading aloud than when recalling a traumatic personal experience. A previous study by Oyama (1982) has found that, contarary to predictions based on native speakers' behaviour in the same task (Labov, 1966), foreign learners of English displayed greater accents during the oral reading task than when telling about a brush with death or about another traumatic time in their lives. It was, therefore, hypothesized that the subjects in this study would perform like the subjects in Oyama's study. The other hypotheses were: 1) the earlier the age at which subjects arrived in Canada, or other English-speaking country, and began learning English, the better their accents would be judged; 2) the greater the number of years spent in Canada, or other English-speaking country, the better their accents would be judged; 3) the native languages of ESL speakers would influence the decisions about the degree of foreign accent made by judges. Taped samples from 29 ESL learners were collected, edited for length, and played to 13 native speaking judges who rated the degree of accent for each speaker heard on a five-point scale. Included on the tape which the judges heard were samples from native speakers to determine intrajudge validity (i.e., how effectively the pronunciation measure differentiated native from non-ntive speakers). Those judges who were unable to identify the speech of native speakers were dropped from the study. Previous researchers have used the mode of the judges' decisions as the appropriate indicator of each subject's accent; in this study, computations were made using both the mode and the mean. They were found to yield nearly identical results in the analyses. Data were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA, SPSS X) with the two linguistic contexts as the dependent variables and age of arrival, years in Canada and native language as independent variables. The results showed no difference between the two linguistic contexts, and that age of arrival and native language contributed significantly to the degree of foreign accent while years in Canada did not. Specifically, learners who arrived at a younger age had better accents than those who arrived at an older age. Because subjects were unequally distributed across the languages, it was not possible to determine which native languages are statistically significant in predicting the degree of foreign accent of these learners of English.
Education, Faculty of
Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of
Graduate

This study is a synchronic investigation of variability in interlanguage phonology of Malaysian learners of English. The study investigates patterns of style shifting in the speech performance of the Malaysian learners of English as they vary according to various stylistic environments i.e. verbal tasks viz, minimal pairs reading, word list reading, dialogue reading and free conversation representing different contexts of situation ranging from the most formal to the most casual form of speech styles. The main objective of this thesis is to establish patterns of style stratification in the speech production of the subjects and to trace whether there exists any systematic patterning in the subjects' pronunciation of the target English sounds of both the individual subjects and across the group of subjects who come from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds. This study is also undertaken in order to determine the extent to which Labovian 'attention to speech' may be used as a causal explanation for variability in the speech production of the subjects. This study is adapted from the variability model developed by William Labov (1970) and extended by Lorna Dickerson (1974) in her interlanguage investigation of Japanese learners of English for showing stylistic variation of speakers at a given point in time (synchronic variation) with the use of a single linear scale as a method of data analysis. An experimental investigation involving an interview method with the individual subjects, using four-part, Labov-style, self-administered tests were carried out at the University of Science, Malaysia. The results of this study showthat there is phonological variation in the subjects' performance of all the phonemes under investigation and this variation seems to be systematic in nature. The speech performance of the Malaysian subjects in this study is responsive to the nature of the verbal tasks they are engaged in and in their production of most of the target English phonemes they produced the predicted ranking of style shifting according to the Labovian 'attention to speech' hypothesis. According to the hypothesis the subjects' speech performance should record the highest index score in the task which requires the greatest attention to be paid to the speech (minimal pairs reading) with the lowest index score in the tasks which has the least attention (free conversation). As the results reveal, in most cases the subjects record the highest index scores in the reading of minimal pairs. This is followed by word list reading, then dialogue reading and finally free conversation which records the lowest index scores of all. However, the only exception to this regular patterning is in the subjects' performance of phonemes /v/ and in where it may be due to factors such as phonological transfer from Bahasa Malaysia (for phoneme Id) or inadequate data for comparison (for phoneme /v/ as well as phonemes /p/, /b/ and /g/ in free conversation) . The results of statistical analysis using a Repeated Measurement of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) indicate that there is significant difference in the performance of the subjects across the four verbal tasks with the reading of minimal pairs the highest in the rank, followed by word list reading then dialogue reading and finally free conversation, the lowest in the rank. The results of this study suggest that 'attention to speech' could be used to account for variability in the subjects' speech performance of most of the TL phonemes under investigation across the four different verbal tasks. However, it cannot adequately explain variability in the subjects' performance of the TL phoneme /r/. The results also suggest that though the subjects' speech performance is also sensitive to the position of phonemes in the words (i.e. word initial, medial or final), their production of those phonemes seems to be governed by the nature of the verbal tasks they are engaged in. As regards the group performance according to subjects' ethnolinguistic backgrounds, the results reveal that in most cases there is no significant difference in the performance of the subjects who come from different ethnolinguistic groups viz. Malay, Chinese and Indian. This is supported by statistical results which indicate no significant difference in the performance of the subjects according to groups with the exception of subjects performance of /0/ and /g/ where in their production of the target phoneme /0/, subjects who come from a Malay background records the highest mean scores followed by subjects who come from a Chinese background and finally those who come from an Indian background. As regards, phoneme /g/, the results suggest that subjects from a Chinese background record the lowest mean scores of all.

In this thesis I explore the phonological nature of newly acquired perceptual representations by highly proficient late-learners of English whose L1 is Spanish, specifically in the case where two different L2 sounds are being initially mapped onto the same L1 category. I claim that these perceptual representations are not phonemic; rather, what these learners acquire are phonetic representations that can be discriminable under certain conditions in a manner similar to that of native speakers, but that are nevertheless identified as tokens of the same L1 category. Since speech perception is a categorisation process where the acoustic input is mapped onto the existing phonemic categories, then late-learners will use their L1 representations when perceiving acoustic input; and will therefore have no need to create new perceptual categories. An alternative hypothesis holds that late-learners can bootstrap new perceptual categories by means of UG access, which allows them to bypass the default categorisation process and notice the difference between their L1 categories and the actual L2 input, so that new perceptual categories can be created. This thesis focuses on the acquisition of the perceptual contrast between the open-mid back unrounded vowel /2/ and the low back unrounded vowel /A/, both of which are mapped onto the same L1 perceptual category /a/. Two experiments were conducted. Subjects were divided in three groups: one of native speakers (NS), a group of highly proficient nonnative speakers of English with Spanish as L1 (NNS-A), and a group of L1 Spanish speakers who were nonproficient in English (NNS-B). The experiments included identification, discrimination and rating tasks along synthesised /A - 2/ vowel continua (7-step and 5-step). The results showed that unlike the NS group, both groups of nonnative speakers categorised the tokens along the /2 - A/ continuum randomly when using L2-like labels; and showing a strong preference towards /a/ when using L1-like labels. Discrimination, on the other hand, differed according to the task: discrimination of adjacent tokens yielded similar results across the three groups, but nonadjacent tokens showed that the NNS-A group is more sensitive than the NNS-B group and less sensitive than the NS group. Finally, prototypicality ratings showed that while NS considered the endpoints of the continuum as good exemplars of the categories /A/ and /2/, both groups of nonnative speakers rated all tokens along the continuum as equally good instances of /a/. From these results I conclude that while late-learners of L2 English do not create new phonemic categories for /A/ and /2/, they are able to perceive a difference that nevertheless does not seem to be enough to create a category split. These findings have implications for a theory of learnability in SLA, since it suggests that latelearners have partial access to UG insofar as input alone leads to learning within the phonetic domain but not to creation of new phonemic categories.

Book Summary: Phonemic awareness and phonetic skill are the backbones of phonological theory. In phonological acquisition, the presence or lack of the former crucially determines the outcome of the latter. This inescapably becomes a common thread that interweaves developmental phonology in both childhood and adulthood. Child and adult-learner speech in the course of development constitute separate linguistic systems in their own right: they are intermediate states whose endpoint is, or ought to be, mastery of targeted speech either in a first or a second language. These intermediate states form the theme of this volume which introduces the term protolanguage (to refer to child language in development) and juxtaposes it with interlanguage (to refer to language development in adulthood). Although major languages like English and Spanish are included, there is an emphasis in the book on under-reported languages: monolingual Hungarian and Swedish and bilingual combinations, like Greek-English and German-English. There is also a focus on under-represented studies in IL: L2 German from L1 French; L2 English from Catalan and Portuguese; and in dialectal acquisition of Ecuadorian Spanish from Andalusian speakers. This volume brings together different methodological approaches with a stress on both phonetic and phonological analysis. It includes both child and adult developmental perspectives, descriptive and/or theoretical results from a combination of methodological approaches (e.g. single-case, cross-sectional; spontaneous speech samples, narrative retells) and a consideration of speech acquisition in the general context of language. The volume aims to motivate a shift in the general tendency among researchers to specialize in language subfields (L1 acquisition; L2 acquisition, bilingualism; typical/atypical language) of what is actually one common linguistic domain, i.e. the study of speech sounds (phonology/phonetics).

Production errors made by second language (L2) learners of English have been attributed to markedness, L1 transfer or input frequency (cf. Major, 2001; Edwards & Zampini, 2008; Baptista, Rauber, & Watkins, 2009). This thesis examines the production of 17 English initial consonant clusters (e.g., /pr/ in “pray”) in a markedness relationship, whereby clusters with greater sonority distance between the first and second consonants are unmarked and clusters with smaller sonority distance between the first and second consonants are marked, by two groups of Saudi Arabian L2 English learners. It also explores the effect of input frequency and L1 transfer. Participants were asked to read 60 sentences and their reading was recorded for acoustic analysis. Analysis showed that “prothesis” was always used to simplify the clusters, and that, the duration of the prothetic vowel tended to get longer when clusters become more marked. Intermediate participants had greater degree of difficulty in producing the clusters and tended to insert a longer prothetic vowel in general. Markedness explained the performance on #sC clusters; however, performance on non #sC clusters was best explained by L1 transfer. Results further indicated that input frequency was irrelevant to this study.

Ce travail s’inscrit dans le cadre global de la didactique du FLE/FLS puis dans celui, plus précis, de la prononciation du français parlé et porte sur les difficultés des apprenants hungarophones en production orale. Si le matériel phonique des deux langues présente certaines similitudes, le point nodal des interférences réside surtout dans les oppositions vocaliques (durée phonologique en hongrois vs durée phonétique en français), la prononciation de certaines consonnes et la prosodie (accent tonique d’intensité hongrois vs accent rythmique duratif français). Diverses méthodes expérimentales usitées à l’Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg seront exploitées : spectrographie pour le timbre et la durée des voyelles ainsi que pour les phénomènes prosodiques, laryngographie pour les assimilations de sonorité et contacts consonantiques. Les analyses se situeront donc au niveau segmental, comme au niveau suprasegmental. Outre de se poser en tant que contribution à l’étude comparée et contrastive des langues, cette recherche privilégiera les visées didactique et pédagogique et apportera en dernier lieu explications et astuces de remédiation. Nous espérons que cette thèse sera utile à nos collègues français exerçant en Hongrie, mais aussi à nos collègues hongrois n’ayant pas forcément conscience de certaines fautes typiques et redondantes, car partant du même substrat que leurs apprenants
This research fits into the overall framework of FLE/FLS teaching methods and more precisely, of spoken French pronunciation. It deals with the difficulties of native Hungarian learners in oral production. While the sounds of the two languages have some similarities, most of the interferences are to be found in the vowel oppositions (Hungarian phonological duration vs French phonetic duration), the pronunciation of certain consonants and prosody (Hungarian tonic intensity stress vs durational rhythmic French accent). Various experimental methods commonly used at the Institut de Phonétique de Strasbourg were applied : spectrography for the quality and duration of vowels, and for the prosodic characteristics, laryngography for pitch assimilations and consonant contacts. Analyses therefore lean both on the segmental and the supra-segmental levels.This work is more than just a comparative and contrastive study of languages, as it goes beyond by focusing on didactic and pedagogical purposes, using explanations and remediation tips. We hope that it will be useful to French teachers in Hungary, but also to our Hungarian colleagues who may not always be aware of some typical and redundant faults, starting from the same substrate as their learners

1) Utilisation des corpus oraux en FLE. On postule une unité minimale d'information syntaxique qui opère dans les situations d'interaction communicative. Au niveau macro-syntaxique, cette unité informe la syllabe proéminente. Des positions linéarisées sont décrites pour comparer les syllabations concurrentes. Sur cette base, le gabarit syllabique opératif dans l'interlangue de l'apprenant peut être modifié par la présentation d'un modèle alternatif. Les productions déviantes constatées dans les corpus (intra-langue) justifient l'intervention d'un didacticien-tuteur et la formulation de règles établissant des rapports phonologiques entre la syllabation erratique et une syllabation modèle. 2) Les ressources. Les enregistrements de corpus oraux suivant le protocole PFC (Durand, Laks & Lyche, 2002/2009), permettent de répertorier les contextes de liaison de 14 informateurs de niveau B1/B2 apprenants de FLE à Madrid. En lecture les liaisons sont classées selon les analyses disponibles du texte PFC conçu pour étudier la variation chez des francophones. Les transcriptions orthographiques des conversations ont été réalisées par un transcripteur du sous projet IPFC (Detey, et al. 2010) qui vise l'alignement et le traitement de corpus oraux de locuteurs non francophones. 3) Traitement de données et perspectives. Trois notations (lecture, conversation, prosodie) marquent les productions pour analyse. Leur élaboration s'inspire de la méthodologie appliquée en acquisition du français L1 (Chevrot, Dugua & Fayol, 2008) et repèrent les consonnes parasites, omissions et erreurs à distance. Des critères prosodiques sont proposés pour reconstruire la syntaxe par l'élaboration d'exercices correctifs.

L'assimilation phonologique peut faire varier la forme sonore d'un mot sous l'influence des segments qui l'entourent. La reconnaissance des mots doit compenser ces variations systématiques caractéristiques du langage parlé. Trois expériences de détection de mot en français, anglais et américain montrent que les auditeurs utilisent une connaissance phonologique implicite des processus d'assimilation spécifiques à leur langue. En outre, cette connaissance intervient à un niveau indépendant de l'activation des représentations lexicales,la même compensation ayant été observée sur des mots et des non-mots. Ce mécanisme de compensation est également plastique : la comparaison d'apprenants anglophones et francophones d'une seconde langue (L2) montre qu'à un stade débutant, c'est le système phonologique de la langue maternelle qui effectue la compensation, mais que la construction d'un système spécifique dédié à la L2 est possible en l'espace de quelques années suite à une exposition suffisante
Phonological assimilation may change the acoustic shape of words according to the influence of surrounding segments. Word recognition has to cope with this systematic variability which characterizes spoken language. Three word-detection experiments in French, English and American English show that listeners use implicit phonological knowledge of the assimilation processes that exist in their language. Moreover, this knowledge of the assimilation independently of the activation of a lexical form, as the same compensation patterns have been observed in words and in non-words. This compensation mechanism shows some flexibility : comparing French and American second language (L2) learners shows that beginners use the phonological system of their native language to compensate for assimilation processes that exist in L2, but that more advanced learners develop a specific system dedicated to L2 within a few years of exposure

Dans cette thèse, j'ai étudié les mécanismes cognitifs qui permettent la rapidité et la facilité surprenantes de l'acquisition phonologique précoce. Dans une série de d'expériences interlangues, j'ai analysé les rôles respectifs de l'apprentissage distributionnel et des connaissances linguistiques
In this thesis l studied the cognitive mechanisms that allow for the surprising speed and ease of early phonological acquisition. In a series of cross-linguistic experiments l analyzed the respective roles of distributional learning and linguistic knowledge

Ce travail entreprend d'évaluer l'évolution de l'acquisition phonologique par des étudiants français des contrastes anglais /ɪ/-/i:/ et /ʊ/-/u:/. Le corpus étudié provient d'enregistrements de conversations spontanées menées avec des étudiants natifs. 12 étudiants, 9 femmes et 3 hommes,ont été suivis lors de 4 sessions espacées chacune d'un intervalle de six mois. L'approche adoptée est résolument quantitative, et agnostique quant aux théories d'acquisition d'une deuxième langue (par exemple Flege 2005, Best 1995,Kuhl 2008). Afin d'estimer les éventuels changements de prononciation, une procédure automatique d'alignement et d'extraction des données acoustiques a été conçue à partir du logiciel PRAAT (Boersma 2001). Dans un premier temps, deux autres logiciels (SPPAS et P2FA, Bigi 2012 et Yuan &Liberman 2008) avaient aligné les transcriptions des enregistrements au phonème près. Plus de 90 000 voyelles ont ainsi été analysées. Les données extraites sont constituées d'informations telles que le nombre de syllabes du mot, de sa transcription acoustique dans le dictionnaire, de la structure syllabique, des phonèmes suivant et précédant la voyelle, de leur lieu et manière d'articulation, de leur appartenance ou non au même mot, mais surtout des relevés formantiques de F0, F1, F2, F3 et F4. Ces relevés formantiques ont été effectués à chaque pourcentage de la durée de la voyelle afin de pouvoir tenir compte des influences des environnements consonantiques sur ces formants. Par ailleurs, des théories telles que le changement spectral inhérent aux voyelles (Nearey & Assmann(1986), Morrison & Nearey (2006), Hillenbrand (2012),Morrison (2012)), ou des méthodes de modélisation du signal telles que la transformation cosinoïdale discrète(Harrington 2010) requièrent que soient relevées les valeurs formantiques des voyelles tout au long de leur durée. Sont successivement étudiées la fiabilité de l'extraction automatique, les distributions statistiques des valeurs formantiques de chaque voyelle et les méthodes de normalisation appropriées aux conversations spontanées. Les différences entre les locuteurs sont ensuite évaluées en analysant tour à tour et après normalisation les changements spectraux, les valeurs formantiques à la moitié de la durée de la voyelle et les transformations cosinoïdales. Les méthodes déployées sont les k plus proches voisins, les analyses discriminantes quadratiques et linéaires, ainsi que les régressions linéaires à effets mixtes. Une conclusion temporaire de ce travail est que l'acquisition du contraste/ɪ/-/i:/ semble plus robuste que celle de /ʊ/-/u:/
This study undertakes to assess the evolution of the phonological acquisition of the English /ɪ/-/i:/ and /ʊ/-/u:/ contrasts by French students. The corpus is made up of recordings of spontaneous conversations with native speakers. 12 students, 9 females and 3 males, were recorded over 4 sessions in six-month intervals. The approach adopted here is resolutely quantitative, and agnostic with respect to theories of second language acquisition such as Flege's, Best's or Kuhl's. In order to assess the potential changes in pronunciations, an automatic procedure of alignment and extraction has been devised, based on PRAAT (Boersma 2001). Phonemic and word alignments had been carried out with SPPAS (Bigi 2012) and P2FA (Yuan & Liberman 2008) beforehand. More than 90,000 vowels were thus collected and analysed. The extracted data consist of information such as the number of syllables in the word, the transcription of its dictionary pronunciation, the structure of the syllable the vowel appears in, of the preceding and succeeding phonemes, their places and manners of articulation, whether they belong to the same word or not, but also especially of the F0, F1, F2, F3 and F4 formant values. These values were collected at each centile of the duration of the vowel, in order to be able to take into account of the influences of consonantal environments. Besides, theories such as vowel-inherent spectral changes (Nearey & Assmann (1986), Morrison & Nearey (2006), Hillenbrand (2012), Morrison (2012)), and methods of signal modelling such as discrete cosine transforms (Harrington 2010) need formant values all throughout the duration of the vowel. Then the reliability of the automatic procedure, the per-vowel statistical distributions of the formant values, and the normalization methods appropriate to spontaneous speech are studied in turn. Speaker differences are assessed by analysing spectral changes, mid-temporal formant values and discrete cosine transforms with normalized values. The methods resorted to are the k nearest neighbours, linear and quadratic discriminant analyses and linear mixed effects regressions. A temporary conclusion is that the acquisition of the /ɪ/-/i:/ contrast seems more robust than that of the /ʊ/-/u:/ contrast

Le phénomène des accents étrangers, bien qu'étudié par de nombreux chercheurs, n'est clairement défini ni au niveau de son origine (physiologique ou psychologique) ni de sa nature (interférences ou langue intermédiaire). De plus l'auditeur natif n'est pas en mesure de décrire les sensations auditives qui l'ont conduit à identifier l'origine de son interlocuteur. Une synthèse d'articles mène à l'élaboration d'hypothèses sur les accents étrangers. Le message parlé a une existence physique qui peut être étudiée objectivement : le signal acoustique. Les enregistrements digitalisés de mots français prononcés par des allemands et des français sont traités par différentes méthodes afin de mettre en évidence des caractéristiques de l'accent allemand. Les études combinées de la représentation temporelle, d'une analyse de Fourier, du taux de passages à zéro et des spectres de voyelles permettent une bonne visualisation des paramètres recherchés. Les résultats d'une analyse perceptuelle sont comparés aux données acquises sur les signaux. On en déduit des hypothèses sur l'accent allemand, qui seront vérifiées par l'analyse d'une seconde série de mots. Ces deux analyses confortent l'hypothèse de la langue intermédiaire et mettent en évidence l'importance de la coarticulation. Il existe des contextes phonémiques et phonologiques favorables et défavorables. Les problèmes sont dépendants du locuteur.

碩士
國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
87
This thesis is concerned with the description and interpretation of second language speech produced by second-grade junior high school students in learning English. The description of their production is surveyed in terms of phonetic aspect, phonological rules, consonant clusters, and prosodic features (stress and intonation). What is more important, the attempt to discover and explain the characteristics of their second language speech are approached from a number of different perspectives: transfer from L1, developmental processes of the target language (English), and markedness relation from universal implication. Besides, the interaction of these factors with learners' interlanguage is also the major concern in this study The results of this study are investigated in the light of the segmental aspects, consonant cluster, and the prosodic aspect. In terms of segmental aspects, we conclude that the production of the subjects can be examined with reference to L1 transfer, English developmental sequences, sound misperception and the lack of English phonological knowledge. This indicates an important fact that L1 transfer is by no means the only factors operative in the learning of English. Besides, the interaction of L1 transfer and English developmental processes with the participants' interlanguage is also explored in this study. L1 transfer best predicts the difficulty of segment, while English developmental processes best account for the sound substitution for these difficult sounds. For example, L1 transfer is successful in predicting the participants' difficulty with the segment /T/, /Z/, and /D/, since they are absent from Mandarin. However, L1 transfer fails to account for the systematic substitutions for these difficult sounds. For instance, the participants tend to replace /T/ with /s/, /f/ or /d/. In this respect, English developmental sequences provide an insight into sound substitutions for /T/ in that English-speaking children also show the tendency to mispronounce /T/ as /s/, /f/, or /d/. In addition, L1 transfer is more likely to occur when L1 and L2 are similar, whereas English developmental processes are liable to occur when L1 and L2 are different. For instance, English segments /S, tS, dZ/ have the counterparts in Mandarin /t, tt, tt'/. Their phonological similarity induces the participants to establish correspondences between the target sound and their Mandarin counterparts and thereby to acquire them faster. By contrast, the segments /T, D, Z/ absent from Mandarin are acquired slowly and the acquisition of these segments are somewhat similar to English phonological development, since their sound substitutions for these segments can be found in the production of English-speaking children. Concerning consonant clusters, there are three important findings worth noting. First, cluster reduction and vowel epenthesis are two common strategies employed by the participants in producing English consonant clusters. Besides, it is observed that the subjects prefer cluster reduction to vowel epenthesis. Second, final consonant clusters are more subject to reduction than medial and initial ones. Third, the reduction of consonant clusters is not random, but shows a predictable pattern: The deletion of liquids takes priority over the omission of other consonants in clusters, followed by the deletion of stops. The top priority of the deletion of the liquids in clusters is accounted for by English developmental sequences. The tendency to delete the liquid in clusters is well documented in the acquisition of first language phonology of English. (cf. Locke, 1983; Stoel-Grammons & Dunn, 1985; Vihmen, 1996). In addition, Clements' Sonority Theory (1990) provide an insight into the reason why the deletion of the stop in the final clusters is the second strategy used by the participants. Regarding the prosodic aspect, most of the participants have difficulty with English intonation and English stress. In terms of grammatical constructions, we observe that the subjects perform better on yes-no questions than the other sentence patterns. It appears that some of the subjects notice and pay attention to the rising contour at the end of yes-no questions.

碩士
國立臺灣師範大學
華語文教學研究所
99
Studies on interlanguage phonology has been paid less attention than other learning aspects, such morphology, syntax, and Chinese character. From the practical perspective, foreign accent is one of the more important indices to measure the success of a learner’s Chinese language performance, however, not many language programs make serious efforts to reduce the amount of foreign accent carried by L2 learners of Mandarin Chinese. Many argue that pronunciation is not as important as vocabulary and grammar, as long as the speaking output is understandable. On the other hand, some remarkable phonemes in Mandarin phonetic system distinguishes Mandarin from other foreign languages and thereby cause learners’ difficulties in Madarin pronunciation. Moreover, with the regained interest in the field of second language acquisition, study on Spanish speakers learning Mandarin remains rare. This study intends to obtain a broad view of foreign accents produced by Spanish speakers. By analyzing the output within three perspectives: initials, finals, and tones, the author wishes to offer Mandarin phonetic pedagogy exclusively for Spanish spears. First, a general comparison of the phonological system of standard Mandarin and Spanish is conducted to explore the structural differences between the two languages. Then, an experiment and interview is conducted to explore learner’s errors before any propositions are put forward. A complete description and analysis is beyond the scope of a single thesis study, only a few major phonological structures are examined, including initial, final, and the four tones in single, double, and triple syllables. The testing material is designed based on former studies and experience. It contains every initial, final and most of the combination of the four tones. A number of studies have been conducted to explore foreign accent and errors, but most of them targeted those other than Spanish learners. This study tries to answer several important questions, such as what are the common errors of Spanish speakers of Mandarin, what are the causal factors lead to the difficulty of learning Mandarin pronunciation, and how does the interlanguage phonology system develop during the acquisition. In chapter 1, an introduction and purposes of the study is introduced. Chapter 2 is literature review for interlanguage system, research methods in the field of second language acquisition, former studies on foreign learners’ phonetic errors, and phonetic pedagogy proposed by researchers. Chapter3 introduces the research methods and procedure of the study. Chapter 4 and 5 cover the experiment result and analysis in detail for the three important aspects of Mandarin phonetic system. Chapter 4 discusses the statistical results and analysis of questionnaires, listening tests, and errors examined from speaking output. Chapter 5 focuses on the integrated analysis and explores the factors that cause learners’ errors, and lastly within this chapter the development of learners’ phonetic acquisition is represented based on the experiment data. Chapter 6 summarizes the conclusions of the study and addresses some suggestions for possible future studies.

This thesis focuses on the realization of high front vowel in Czech and Spanish, with respect to second language acquisition. In the first part, general theoretical concepts are explained, such as fossilization, SLA, critical period, and SLA model designed by Flege (1995) and also a comparison of the Spanish and Czech vowel is given. As Czech and Spanish vocalic systems are very similar, the subtile phonetic differences are to be detected in the second part where realizations of these two vowels in selected consonantal contexts are analysed. Key words: Second Language Acquisition, Phonetics, Interlanguage, Spanish, high front vowel.