A Study of English Compound and Phrasal Stress: A Comparison between Taiwanese Advanced English Speakers and Native English Speakers
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Hsu, Li-chao
Abstract
Extensive foreign accent studies have long recognized the crucial role of second language (L2) prosody to successfully convey linguistic and pragmatic meaning in exchanges with native speakers. However, much less work has been dedicated to the prosodic differences in fundamental frequency (F0), intensity, and duration between Taiwanese advanced English speakers (NNG) and native English speakers (NG). In order to bridge the gap, the present thesis (1) compares the acoustic features between compounds and phrases, (2) compares the acoustic correlates in English compound and phrasal stress between NNG and NG, and (3) examine if NNG can differentiate compounds from phrases. We hypothesize that Taiwanese advanced English speakers might encounter L1 interference as Mandarin Chinese and English belong to two different language systems, with the former being more like a syllable-timing and a tone language and the latter being more like a stress-timing and a stress-and-intonation language. n the thesis, an experiment was conducted with the participation of 51 Taiwanese speakers and 50 native English speakers. Each participant was asked to speak 30 sentences in which the tested compounds or phases are imbedded in the initial position with the rest being exactly the same. The prosodic values were first extracted from the speech data by using Praat, and then mixed two-way ANOVA tests were carried out to identify the significant disparity between the two groups.he major findings are as follows. (1) Compounds and phrases differ significantly in all F0, intensity, and duration parameters. (2) NNG’s performance differs significantly from NG’s in some F0 parameters, such as a different F0 range in both compounds and phrases and a later F0 alignment in compounds, and in some duration parameters, such as a longer duration for the less prominent rhymes in compounds and a longer pause duration in compounds and phrases. However, NNG resembles NG in most intensity parameters. (3) NNG does not demonstrate distinct acoustic correlates to differentiate compounds from phrases. Observing from the results, we stipulate Taiwanese speakers have not mastered English prosodic characteristics and are interfered by L1. We assume the concept of prominence is not emphasized in Mandarin Chinese, and thus NNG is weaker at manipulating the less prominent rhymes. The thesis underlines the impact of L1 interference and further suggests pedagogical implications of highlighting the placement of primary stress and appropriate F0, intensity, and duration values for less prominent rhymes in English.
Subjects
compound stress
phrasal stress
acoustic features
second language prosody
Taiwanese speakers
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