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摘要：中国学生在学习英语发音的过程中往往会产生问题，这是因为学生所熟悉的汉语与英语属于两种不同的语系，在语音系统上存在很大差别，而第二语言学习过程中普遍存在着语言迁移现象，于是学生在发音上容易受他们的母语，即汉语的影响，从而形成发音错误和偏差。根据语言迁移理论，通过汉语和英语发音的对比，分析常见的中国学生英语发音错误，可以针对这些问题提出一些可行的解决方法。
关键词：发音问题 语音系统 对比 不同点 语言迁移
Introduction
Accurate pronunciation and intonation are the basic quality of a language user. However, there are many problems in Chinese students’ pronunciation of English, resulting from the negative transfer of their mother tongue—Chinese. Examples of errors made by English learners in pronunciation are common, displaying on both segmental and suprasegmental levels.
The slight differences between Chinese and English in pronunciation which are not so obvious can easily cause negative transfer. By contrasting the sound systems of the two languages, learners will be clear about the causes of the problems and learn some skills to avoid or tackle these problems.
1. Problems in Pronouncing Segmental Phonemes
Different languages have different phonemic systems. Still, there exist true linguistic universals and near universals in all languages. An awareness of the differences between the new and the native language can help students realize which of their native language speech habits can be transferred to the new language and which can not.
Problems for Chinese students at segmental level can mainly be divided into two kinds:
1.1 Problems with Sounds Totally New to Chinese Students
Some English sounds do not exist in the Chinese sound system, which leaves a gap between the two language sound systems. Thus it imposes certain limitations on the Chinese students’ English pronunciation learning. As a result, Chinese learners of English are always trying to find a similar sound in Chinese language to substitute for the English sound, which causes deviation:
(1)Many Chinese learners ignore the difference between /w/ and /v/. Because in Chinese the distinction between [w] and [v] is not phonemic, i.e. sound substitution of the two sounds cannot cause differences in meaning. As a result, although the students may clearly know the manner of articulation, they still wouldn’t like to make effort to distinguish the two sounds. For example, the phrase ‘very well’ is always wrongly pronounced as /veri vel/ or /weri wel/.
(2)/θ/ and / / are sounds which fail to find their Chinese counterparts. Students usually produce /s/ and /z/ because alveolar causes less effort and is easier to pronounce than dental. Much practice is needed for Chinese students to get used to the special way of pronouncing.
(3)Vowel length does not cause differences in Chinese. Different tones are used to distinguish sounds of the same quality. For example, mā, má, mǎ, mà represent four different words. In Chinese, since there are tones, the meanings of words can be told easily. Although students are told in English there is difference between short vowel and long vowel, they don’t thoroughly know the way of articulation. In English the short vowels do not need much muscular tension; the tongue should be held loosely. In Chinese there are no such lax and tense pairs, thus they become difficult for Chinese students. Actually few Chinese students can clearly distinguish short vowels from long vowels.
(4)There is no / / in Chinese; students are not used to open their mouth so widely. They often pronounce / / wrongly as /e/ or /ai/. For example, it’s hard to tell the difference between bed and bad from their pronunciation.
(5)There is no phoneme / / in Chinese. Many students pronounce it as /a/ in Chinese without awareness of it. Chinese phoneme /a/ is an open, front and unrounded long vowel with lips spread while English / / is a half-open, central, and unrounded short vowel. For example, when they say mother/m /, it often sounds like /ma/, and likewise, love /l v/ sounds like /lav/.
1.2 Problems with Sounds Confused by Students as Some Chinese Sounds
English and Chinese phone systems do not match completely. Some phonemes seem to be similar but far from identical. Yet the beginning learners inevitably resort to Chinese sounds which have some similarities with English ones. It is difficult for them to utter with the right shape of mouth or the right speech organ, especially when the students take it for granted that they are the same things.
(1)Although both English and Chinese have plosives, their pronunciations are not exactly the same. Most students can’t hear the slight difference in the state of the vocal cords. In English, plosives go in contrastive pairs, with one voiced and the other voiceless. But Chinese plosive pairs are distinguished from each other by aspiration, not by voicing. For instance, in Chinese both “b” and “p”are voiceless. So are the other pairs such as “d” and “t”; “g” and “k”; “zh”and“ch”, etc. The only difference is that, in pronouncing the aspirated “p, t, k, ch”, the air is puffed out strongly, whereas with the unaspirated “b, d, g, zh” the air is let out with a pop through the lips.
(2)In some areas of China, especially places where local dialects are popular, /n/ and / / are not distinguished. So students there pronounce branch (/bra:nt /) as /bra: t /. Thus it is quite possible that Chinese learners may not be able to hear the difference between sin and sing. They should be told that /n/ is produced by the tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge while / / is produced by the back of the tongue and the hard palate.
(3)In the south of China, many students aren’t able to distinguish /n/ and /l/ when a vowel is following them. For example, knife (/naif/) is always pronounced as /laif/. /n/ and /l/ are both alveolar. But when producing /n/, the air should go through the nasal cavity while for lateral /l/ the airstream goes out through the two sides of the tougue.
(4)Most Chinese students pronounce /r/ not retroflex enough. It should be articulated with the tip of the tongue turned back and up toward the roof of the mouth while in Chinese only the middle of the tongue.
(5)The English pure vowels process more different tongue heights and occupy more new horizontal dimensions as well than the simple vowels in Chinese. Furthermore, the English simple vowels are around the centre of the vowel area while the vowels in Chinese distribute more dispersive.
(6)The pronunciation of the diphthongs in English vowels has an obvious process of glide from one sound to another with certain length and degree, and the shape and width of mouth, but the diphthongs in Chinese do not have these characteristics. When pronouncing a diphthong in Chinese, the shape of mouth is relaxed, and there is no obvious process of gliding.
(7)/i/ is sometimes pronounced by Chinese students as /ei/ when following an “h”. That is because /h/ and /i/ never appear together in Chinese. What’s more, “h”(/x/) in Chinese is a velar fricative while /h/ in English is a glottal. Thus history (/`hist ri/) is often pronounced by some Chinese students as/`heist ri/ and he (/hi:/) as /hei/(like “嘿” in Chinese).
2. Suprasegmental Analysis on Pronunciation Problem
Nunan argues that suprasegmental contrast is particularly important when moving from a non-tonal language like English, in which pitch changes indicate attitudinal and emotional meaning, to a tonal language like Thai in which changes in intonation and pitch mark phonemic differences. This part is to discuss the Chinese students’ pronunciation problems by analysis from suprasegmental aspects—stress, intonation and liasion:
2.1 Analysis in Stress
Stress patterns are vital in English pronunciation, and sometimes the stress alteration will result in the change of part of speech such as nouns and verbs which is confusing to the beginning learners. For instance, record /ri`k d/ is a verb with its stress on the second syllable, while record /`rek d/ is a noun with its stress on the first syllable, and content /k n`tent/ is a verb, while /`k nt nt/ is a noun. The beginning learners cannot distinguish this because in Chinese tone is used to distinguish words and it only has sentence stress, while English has primary stress and secondary stress both in words and sentences.
The beginning learners tend to stress each syllable when reading an English word and stress each word when reading an English sentence. For example, they usually pronounce greenhouse /`gri:nhaus/ as /`gri:n `hause/, blackboard /`bl kb :d/ as /`bl k `b :d/. And because in their native speech each word is read with almost equal stress, they tend to stress each word in a sentence.
Students should know that English is timed by stress; when reading an English sentence, we do not consider how many syllables in a sentence, and the non-stressed words are usually read vaguely.
2.2 Analysis in Intonation
English is generally regarded as an intonation language, while Chinese is a tone language. In English, the change of intonation in a sentence can be used to express different meanings and different emotions of the speaker. English has a number of intonation patterns which add conventionalized meanings to the utterance: question, statement, surprise, disbelief, sarcasm, teasing. The most active elements of intonation are the tones, which always occur in association with stress.
Although both Chinese and English have tones, there are differences in the functions of the tones between the two languages. In a tone language like Chinese, the tone system is an integral part of the vocabulary. There are four tones in Chinese. English is quite different in this respect. The English tones are used according to the contexts. They function at the level of utterances (or discourse), not at lexical level as in Chinese. Students should have such knowledge about intonation and tone. They should know a certain tone in English expresses a certain meaning or attitude and arbitrarily using tones is not accepted when speaking English.
2.3 Analysis in liaison
Liaison means the linking of sounds or words in connected speech. If we want to speak English fluently, we must try to link words together smoothly and naturally. In other words, we should learn to produce connected speech without gaps between words: the end of one word should flow straight on to the beginning of the next in the same sense group.
Although both Chinese and English sentences are made up of syllables, the juncture between syllables and words are quite different. In Chinese each character is a syllable, we pronounce them one by one with clear division. But in English there is no clear division between syllables in the same sense group.
3. Conclusion
To erase these problems all is impossible, but in practice negative transfer does reduce with the increase in the learner's proficiency in the target language. Imitation is necessary; and the phonetic knowledge as well as some phonological rules should be learned systematically which will be helpful to reduce the errors.
References
[1] He, Shanfen. Practical English Phonetics [M]. Beijing Normal University Press, 1992.
[2] Nunan, D. Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers [M]. New York: Prentic Hall, 1991.
[3] 戴建东. 谈谈英语语音与英语学习[J]. 太原师范学院学报(社会科学版)，2003:104-105.
[4] 洪明. 英汉语音差异与英语语音习得产生的母语负迁移作用[J]. 浙江师范大学学报(社会科学版)，2004:108-111.
[5] 王桂珍． 英语语音教程[M]. 北京：高等教育出版社，2002.
[6] 张大均． 教育心理学[Z]． 北京：人民教育出版社，2001．
[7] 赵帆声，王庆祥. 英语语音释疑[M]. 郑州：河南教育出版社, 1991.
[8] 赵德梅． 英汉比较语音学[M]． 青岛海洋大学出版社，1995．
注：本文中所涉及到的图表、注解、公式等内容请以PDF格式阅读原文
关键词：发音问题 语音系统 对比 不同点 语言迁移
Introduction
Accurate pronunciation and intonation are the basic quality of a language user. However, there are many problems in Chinese students’ pronunciation of English, resulting from the negative transfer of their mother tongue—Chinese. Examples of errors made by English learners in pronunciation are common, displaying on both segmental and suprasegmental levels.
The slight differences between Chinese and English in pronunciation which are not so obvious can easily cause negative transfer. By contrasting the sound systems of the two languages, learners will be clear about the causes of the problems and learn some skills to avoid or tackle these problems.
1. Problems in Pronouncing Segmental Phonemes
Different languages have different phonemic systems. Still, there exist true linguistic universals and near universals in all languages. An awareness of the differences between the new and the native language can help students realize which of their native language speech habits can be transferred to the new language and which can not.
Problems for Chinese students at segmental level can mainly be divided into two kinds:
1.1 Problems with Sounds Totally New to Chinese Students
Some English sounds do not exist in the Chinese sound system, which leaves a gap between the two language sound systems. Thus it imposes certain limitations on the Chinese students’ English pronunciation learning. As a result, Chinese learners of English are always trying to find a similar sound in Chinese language to substitute for the English sound, which causes deviation:
(1)Many Chinese learners ignore the difference between /w/ and /v/. Because in Chinese the distinction between [w] and [v] is not phonemic, i.e. sound substitution of the two sounds cannot cause differences in meaning. As a result, although the students may clearly know the manner of articulation, they still wouldn’t like to make effort to distinguish the two sounds. For example, the phrase ‘very well’ is always wrongly pronounced as /veri vel/ or /weri wel/.
(2)/θ/ and / / are sounds which fail to find their Chinese counterparts. Students usually produce /s/ and /z/ because alveolar causes less effort and is easier to pronounce than dental. Much practice is needed for Chinese students to get used to the special way of pronouncing.
(3)Vowel length does not cause differences in Chinese. Different tones are used to distinguish sounds of the same quality. For example, mā, má, mǎ, mà represent four different words. In Chinese, since there are tones, the meanings of words can be told easily. Although students are told in English there is difference between short vowel and long vowel, they don’t thoroughly know the way of articulation. In English the short vowels do not need much muscular tension; the tongue should be held loosely. In Chinese there are no such lax and tense pairs, thus they become difficult for Chinese students. Actually few Chinese students can clearly distinguish short vowels from long vowels.
(4)There is no / / in Chinese; students are not used to open their mouth so widely. They often pronounce / / wrongly as /e/ or /ai/. For example, it’s hard to tell the difference between bed and bad from their pronunciation.
(5)There is no phoneme / / in Chinese. Many students pronounce it as /a/ in Chinese without awareness of it. Chinese phoneme /a/ is an open, front and unrounded long vowel with lips spread while English / / is a half-open, central, and unrounded short vowel. For example, when they say mother/m /, it often sounds like /ma/, and likewise, love /l v/ sounds like /lav/.
1.2 Problems with Sounds Confused by Students as Some Chinese Sounds
English and Chinese phone systems do not match completely. Some phonemes seem to be similar but far from identical. Yet the beginning learners inevitably resort to Chinese sounds which have some similarities with English ones. It is difficult for them to utter with the right shape of mouth or the right speech organ, especially when the students take it for granted that they are the same things.
(1)Although both English and Chinese have plosives, their pronunciations are not exactly the same. Most students can’t hear the slight difference in the state of the vocal cords. In English, plosives go in contrastive pairs, with one voiced and the other voiceless. But Chinese plosive pairs are distinguished from each other by aspiration, not by voicing. For instance, in Chinese both “b” and “p”are voiceless. So are the other pairs such as “d” and “t”; “g” and “k”; “zh”and“ch”, etc. The only difference is that, in pronouncing the aspirated “p, t, k, ch”, the air is puffed out strongly, whereas with the unaspirated “b, d, g, zh” the air is let out with a pop through the lips.
(2)In some areas of China, especially places where local dialects are popular, /n/ and / / are not distinguished. So students there pronounce branch (/bra:nt /) as /bra: t /. Thus it is quite possible that Chinese learners may not be able to hear the difference between sin and sing. They should be told that /n/ is produced by the tongue tip or blade and the alveolar ridge while / / is produced by the back of the tongue and the hard palate.
(3)In the south of China, many students aren’t able to distinguish /n/ and /l/ when a vowel is following them. For example, knife (/naif/) is always pronounced as /laif/. /n/ and /l/ are both alveolar. But when producing /n/, the air should go through the nasal cavity while for lateral /l/ the airstream goes out through the two sides of the tougue.
(4)Most Chinese students pronounce /r/ not retroflex enough. It should be articulated with the tip of the tongue turned back and up toward the roof of the mouth while in Chinese only the middle of the tongue.
(5)The English pure vowels process more different tongue heights and occupy more new horizontal dimensions as well than the simple vowels in Chinese. Furthermore, the English simple vowels are around the centre of the vowel area while the vowels in Chinese distribute more dispersive.
(6)The pronunciation of the diphthongs in English vowels has an obvious process of glide from one sound to another with certain length and degree, and the shape and width of mouth, but the diphthongs in Chinese do not have these characteristics. When pronouncing a diphthong in Chinese, the shape of mouth is relaxed, and there is no obvious process of gliding.
(7)/i/ is sometimes pronounced by Chinese students as /ei/ when following an “h”. That is because /h/ and /i/ never appear together in Chinese. What’s more, “h”(/x/) in Chinese is a velar fricative while /h/ in English is a glottal. Thus history (/`hist ri/) is often pronounced by some Chinese students as/`heist ri/ and he (/hi:/) as /hei/(like “嘿” in Chinese).
2. Suprasegmental Analysis on Pronunciation Problem
Nunan argues that suprasegmental contrast is particularly important when moving from a non-tonal language like English, in which pitch changes indicate attitudinal and emotional meaning, to a tonal language like Thai in which changes in intonation and pitch mark phonemic differences. This part is to discuss the Chinese students’ pronunciation problems by analysis from suprasegmental aspects—stress, intonation and liasion:
2.1 Analysis in Stress
Stress patterns are vital in English pronunciation, and sometimes the stress alteration will result in the change of part of speech such as nouns and verbs which is confusing to the beginning learners. For instance, record /ri`k d/ is a verb with its stress on the second syllable, while record /`rek d/ is a noun with its stress on the first syllable, and content /k n`tent/ is a verb, while /`k nt nt/ is a noun. The beginning learners cannot distinguish this because in Chinese tone is used to distinguish words and it only has sentence stress, while English has primary stress and secondary stress both in words and sentences.
The beginning learners tend to stress each syllable when reading an English word and stress each word when reading an English sentence. For example, they usually pronounce greenhouse /`gri:nhaus/ as /`gri:n `hause/, blackboard /`bl kb :d/ as /`bl k `b :d/. And because in their native speech each word is read with almost equal stress, they tend to stress each word in a sentence.
Students should know that English is timed by stress; when reading an English sentence, we do not consider how many syllables in a sentence, and the non-stressed words are usually read vaguely.
2.2 Analysis in Intonation
English is generally regarded as an intonation language, while Chinese is a tone language. In English, the change of intonation in a sentence can be used to express different meanings and different emotions of the speaker. English has a number of intonation patterns which add conventionalized meanings to the utterance: question, statement, surprise, disbelief, sarcasm, teasing. The most active elements of intonation are the tones, which always occur in association with stress.
Although both Chinese and English have tones, there are differences in the functions of the tones between the two languages. In a tone language like Chinese, the tone system is an integral part of the vocabulary. There are four tones in Chinese. English is quite different in this respect. The English tones are used according to the contexts. They function at the level of utterances (or discourse), not at lexical level as in Chinese. Students should have such knowledge about intonation and tone. They should know a certain tone in English expresses a certain meaning or attitude and arbitrarily using tones is not accepted when speaking English.
2.3 Analysis in liaison
Liaison means the linking of sounds or words in connected speech. If we want to speak English fluently, we must try to link words together smoothly and naturally. In other words, we should learn to produce connected speech without gaps between words: the end of one word should flow straight on to the beginning of the next in the same sense group.
Although both Chinese and English sentences are made up of syllables, the juncture between syllables and words are quite different. In Chinese each character is a syllable, we pronounce them one by one with clear division. But in English there is no clear division between syllables in the same sense group.
3. Conclusion
To erase these problems all is impossible, but in practice negative transfer does reduce with the increase in the learner's proficiency in the target language. Imitation is necessary; and the phonetic knowledge as well as some phonological rules should be learned systematically which will be helpful to reduce the errors.
References
[1] He, Shanfen. Practical English Phonetics [M]. Beijing Normal University Press, 1992.
[2] Nunan, D. Language Teaching Methodology: A Textbook for Teachers [M]. New York: Prentic Hall, 1991.
[3] 戴建东. 谈谈英语语音与英语学习[J]. 太原师范学院学报(社会科学版)，2003:104-105.
[4] 洪明. 英汉语音差异与英语语音习得产生的母语负迁移作用[J]. 浙江师范大学学报(社会科学版)，2004:108-111.
[5] 王桂珍． 英语语音教程[M]. 北京：高等教育出版社，2002.
[6] 张大均． 教育心理学[Z]． 北京：人民教育出版社，2001．
[7] 赵帆声，王庆祥. 英语语音释疑[M]. 郑州：河南教育出版社, 1991.
[8] 赵德梅． 英汉比较语音学[M]． 青岛海洋大学出版社，1995．
注：本文中所涉及到的图表、注解、公式等内容请以PDF格式阅读原文