Contrastive Analysis:A Phonetic Case

ISSN 1009 -5039Overseas English 海外卖]攝htp://ww.overseaen.comTel:+86-551-5690811 5690812Contrastive Analysis: A Phonetic Case马冬丽.(郑州大学外语学院.河南郑州40000)Abstract: This paper i to make 2 comprion on Chinse and Engfish sounds under cotrastve alyis with dhe cnsidenaion ofthat Chi-nese. reches of Englih would be bter able to frsee their sues' dficatl and cnsequenty be btter able to do their taching plan inpractice.Key words: contrastive analysis; Chinese and English; phonetic comparison中图分类号:G642文献标识码:A文章编号:1009- -5039(2011)04- 0008 031 Introductionvolved in solving all kinds of leamin; problemsin teaching, CAIn his book Contrastive analyis (1980), Carl James wrote "should not be overlooked at all.in the heyday of structural linguistics and the pattem practiceusually Chinese leamers have less dificuly in Englishlanguage leaching methodology which derived insights and jusi.grammar, but have some difculty in remembering new words.fication from such an approach to linguistic description, nothingmore dificulty in writing, and the biggest difculy in speaking,seemed of greater potential value tonguagers anndleam-of many reasons for this, the poor pronunciation makes them stopers than a comparativetalking or hesitate to expresshemselves in comnunicaion. For-er's mother tongue and the target language. If one could juxta-tunately. thestudy of linguitics nowadays is more specialized,pose the struetures of the mother tongue against those of the tar-and more concentrated on parts of whole languages. Phoneties,get language, course desigmers (and teachers and learners) wouldfor instance, as a branch of linguistis which "is concemed withbe better able to plan their leaming and teaching;better able tothe human noises by which the message is actualized or givenforesee dificulty and consequently btter able to husband 地audible shape: the nature of those noises, their combinations, andsources and direct leaming antheir functions in relatin to the message" (OConnor, 1973: 10)Contrastive Analysis is a branch of linguistics which aims atcan berought under the CA calegory, And phonetic cases"producing inverted two -valued ypologies, and founded on theanalysis is quite helpful to know where the pronuncistion prob-assumption that languages can be compared" (J.Carl:3). CA is aslems are, in view of that native language phonetics and phonolo-interested in the inherent genius of the language under isBy have powerful infuence on second language pronunciation.purviewas it is in the comparability of Ilanguages. Yet it is not2 A Phonetic Case by CA: Sounds Comparison inconcermed with clssfcation, and as the term contrastive implies,Standard Chinese and Englishmore interested in dfferences between languages than in theirlikeness (id:2). CA " has grown to be a major concem of aplied，As it is knowm, Chinese use characters which are very diflinguistics. In 1957, Robert Lado published his Linguistic Aerossferent from an alphabet. Characters generally have two parts, oneCultures in which he presented a large quantity of data and stal.of which represents the meaning and the other the sound. Everyed the inrtance ofCA. ..A Contatontrastive analysis of the learn-character corresponds to a single sylable, so the part which rep-er's native language and the target language has and in tum de-resents the sound does not represent aphonemere like a letter inet but rather. represents a whole sllable. Chinese hastemmines what the leamers has to leam and what the teacher hasto teach. Since language leamers have dfferent mother tongues,syllabify rather than alphabet. Three parts: initials, finals andthe teaching has to vary accordingly" (Hu:377).four tones form the sllable of a Chinese word. The sounds ofRobent Lado also pointed out (1957:2); ".. the student whoChinese characters are ofien eferred to as "Bopomofo" in relfer-comes in contact with a foreign Is language will find some featuresence to its first four ltters, just as "alphabet" refers to the initialof it quite easy and others extremely difieulh. Those elementsltters alpha and beta of the Greek alphabet. R. Lado(1957:9)that are similar to his native language will be simple for him, andeven mentioned thatChinesnese does not have ltters, yet it hasthose elements that are dfferent will be dificl. The teacherphonemes (a unit of sound)". Now sounds in Chinese are tran.who has made a comparison of the foreign language with the nascribed or transliterated into the Roman alphabet for the sake oftive language of the students will know better what the realbeing recognized intemationally.learning problems are and can better provide for teaching them."2.1 Sound lists of standard Chinese and EnglishDuring the 12 leaming, erors are comited by learmers becauseThe first step to make a contrast between the sounds of twoof the widespread influence of the mother tongue. CA is just onelanguages is to list them so that diferences can be displayed.of the major approaches to error analysis.The standard Romanization for Mandarin:p ny n is used for theEnglish as a global language. and Chinese, spoken by thetranseriptionwenhophonetie symbols. And the standard setlargest population of the world,pocesses quite diferent Ii langof phonetie symbols for English (RP and similar accents) by Johnsystems.Underthecirumstancess that English is favored as theWells is adopted for Engish sounds.most popular foreign language learmed by mllions of Chinese,Table_ iand that thousands of Chinese teachers of English are much in中国煤化工cated acording to placeYHCNMH G .收稿日期:010-12-14修回日期:2011-01-12作者简介:马冬丽(1963-).女,河南郑州人，副教授，硕士研究生,主要研究方向为语言学与应用语言学。8_酸槽讲运本栏目责任编辑:扬手事2011年4月Overseas Engish海外关语and manner of articulationoughly. /b/. /p/, /m 1, f/ are the same in both languages exceptChinese consonantsthat each sound in Chinese is pronouneed one more phoneme 1o/Place(/:/) al the end; and /d 1, NU. /n/. /1/, lg, Nk/ are also same butthat in Chinese, each sound has one more phoneme /e/3:/) atthe end; Chinese phonemes /12/ and Ie/ have the same values with111English /dz/ and /ts/ although they are written differently. Without| Manmerdoubt. these are the easiest part for Chinese leamers of English,。1.ksince familiarity leads to no dificulty in learning. Lado (1957)| Affricatefound language learmers atempt to transfer the features of their| Fricetuvesh rmother tongue to the second language--"We tend to transfer that| Kesallanguage our phonemes and their variants, our stress and rhythmLateralpatterms, our transitions, our intonation patterms and interactionwith other phonemes"."When the structures of the two languagesEnglish consonantsare similar, we can get positive transfer or failitationr" (Hu, 377).号This positive transfer would be helpful in leaming a foreign lan-、 Place意|guage.From group B and C, it can be seen that consonants in bothL Nenerlanguages have a big gap. They are different not only in spelling| PlosareD.bt. de。but also in pronunciation. They are the sounds entirely missing in| Affrieateis,da) |小4.ranother language because of the different principium of phona-tion. The Chinese lj, /q/, /x/ are the voiceless alveolo palatals.L Fricatute品:..τ0.δ3lj/ unaspirated and africate. Put the glossal tip against theSasllower teeth and the body of| Laternlthe tongue in contact with the hard palate, then emit air;bprs.inamtIq/ aspirated and africale. Put the tip of tongue against thel ei-alower teeth and the body of tongue in contact with the hardTable 2palate, then forcefully emit air;Vowels: the Chinese vowels listed below are 24 in all andlx/ fricative. Put the body of the tongue close to the hardclassified into simple vowels and diphthongs, nasal vowels andpalate and form a narrow constriction,vowels with ng endings. The English vowels cover twelve simplethen emit a flow of air).vowels and eight diphthongs./zh/, /eh/, /sh 1. /el/ are the retroflex which means that the tipof the tongue is flexed upward toward the palate, and /zh/, /ch/| Sapte (owtlsDighthene Nasa Torelt键are africate, /sh/, lr/ are fricative.山ti,ui,助叫n姆，in唱。电ingThe English sounds labiodental /1v; post-alveolar /tr/ /dr/, 1'r/Chintsem un; palato alveolar 1Jf1, 13). 1tf1, /d3/; palatal lj|; voiced nasal /n/;Loap)ai, D, 出。i.o蚂啪胡鹕,glottal /h/; low and short sound lael, IN and etc are totally miss-18..01ing in Chinese . E. Roach (1983), R.Hooke and J Rowell (1982)Eplishand H. J Giegerich (1992) have deseribed them.lv1 the lower lip is in contact with the upper teeth, andthe noise is not strong2.2 Sounds grouping1J1J3/ fricatives, post-alveolar and round lips. 1f1 is voice-From the above charts, sounds of Chinese and English canless, 13/is voiced. The tongue is backward and the air escapesbe grouped as the fllowing:through a litle wider passage along the center of the tongue.2.2.1 Sounds nearly same in both languagess//a/affricates, post-alveolar and round lips. 1Af/ is voice-Camantsetisless, /d3/ is voiced. The tip公。则■;割的好四o(a: ). °ol: ),ela小i(i: ),u(u.)of the tongue stop the air at the alveolar nidge but the frontof the tongue touches儿、k.'sr.到a),e its)ai，ti: 'o(u?r,如(四门the hard palate.Note: sounds in blanks are English transcriptions. And the10/,J8/ dental 10/ is voiceless, 18/ is voiced. The tongue isfollowing is same.normally placed behind the teeth with the tip touching the inside2.2.2. Sounds found in Chinese but not in Englishof the lower front teeth and the blade touching the inside of theConsonantsupper teeth. The air escapes through the gaps between the tongue/j，0理。,h，e，'sh.τu,/i1. ie. e。ue', 'iu'.and the teeth.w/ the front of the tongue is near the alveolar ridge but。.断，in，/m,un，does not touch it. It is pulled away from this position very quick-"g，eng’， ing/， 'ong'2.2.3 Sounds found in English but not in Chinese5j/ the back of the tongue moves up to be near the backConsomntsof the palate. It then moves away very quickly//，小. 3. sB.，好u。ei涵，.日, A，...u,e/ low and short sound. The mouth is open wider than it姆，细，9。iU中国煤化工th is open in a square3 Discussionshape.THCN MH G"Important findings can be seen from group A that ChineseIt has been proven by most teachers' experiences and theand English have many same vowelsreality that students tend to have dificulty in producing this orand consonants or have some equivalents, though not thor-that of these sounds. They are the very problematic sounds which本栏目責任编辑:浙菲菲Overseas English 海外美语2011年4月would cause difculty in learning. Ladofid) again "When there isspeech organs in the process of making sounds. Also the degreeno phoneme in the native language . the students--- will substi-of opening mouth, shape of lips and- the height of tongue tend totute some other phonemes from his native stock". Cognitive lin-be easily under control. For example, the back, low and longguistics study reveals that when L2 learmers meet difculty orvowel 15:/ in English is nearly the same with l1ol in Chinese. Theywhen they make mistakes in using a foreign language, they wouldare made by closing the mouth and rounding the lips. The lttletry to avoid the problems by tuming to paraphrasing, explaining,difference is that /b:/ longer than 1ol . The front, short sound i/simplifying or finding some near -equivalents from their mothercan be made through spreading the lips but not as widely spreadtongue. This avoidance strategy to some degree, might be a blockas for l:/. The mouth should be slighly open just like makingin L2 learming. In China, it is not rare that many studentsChinese sound "衣". The middle and short sound le/- made onlytransliterate English new words in Chinese (characters, especiallyby loosely spreading the lips and slightly opening the mouth, andthose sounds not in their mother tongue. For example, they1a/ --the mouth is nearly closed and the lips are loosely spreadtransliterate and read the word "judge /d3Ad3/" as”架几jaji/",are not dificult to pronounce because of the easy principium of"thank you /Oeok ju:!"* as”三克油/sankayowu", "she /j:/ as "phonation.. It would be a piece of cake for any normal person.西/xi/". With time going, this negative transfer can result in fos-English Diphthongs /ua/, /eal, /1a/, although not in Chinesesilization if leamers are not corrected in time in the process of L2bring no dificulty to Chinese leamers because they are producedlearming,Chinese teachers of English should alocate less timealways in the way of sliding from the previous vowel (here 1u/ or 1on the easier sounds while put more efforts and energy on the/ loud and long to the following one ( here a/ or /I1) lighter andproblemnatic sounds.shorter. If Chinese learmers can produce the simple vowels well,Actually a lot of teachers of English nowaday have reportedit would not be a problem for them to produce the diphthongstheir findings and workings either in papers or in academic con-nicely.ferences. Here is a quotation from The Teaching of Pronunciation4 Conclusionto Chinese Students of English by CHENG Fang -zhi (1998:37),... I find that Chinese students have great difculties with thoseContrastive analysis as a means of juxtaposing two languages"gap" consonants, such as /w, 10/, /10/, /3/, 1J1, IhJ/, 1d3/. They areserves well in L2 study in the way to find the differences ratherthan the similarities. The results from the analysis can be guidesoften replaced either by another English consonant or by a simi-lar Chinese one. For instance, [veri] in "very" is often pro-for teachers and learners. Comparing English and Chinese soundsnounced as [weril;[0igk] in "think" as [sink]; 1AJ/ in "cheap" likeunder linguistic models by means of contrastive analysis is aChinese /qi/ and /d3/ in "judge" like Chinese fji/."proper approach since Chinese is a tonal language, meaning thatthe pitch shape of a sylable has a semantic value and processesChina is a large country with 56 sub-natinalties and hun-dreds of dialects. Local languages are popular in people's dailya number of different sounds from that in English.life in many parts of China, especially in the east and south.When Chinese students itially study English, they oftenTheir accents have this or that sound same with, or different fromfeel that some sounds are very strange and they could not alwaysEnglish. Interestingly, the difficulties that learners have showproduce them properly. More often than not, one can see studentsvery distinct regional features. That is, leamers from one samewrite Chinese characters beside English words as reminders ofregion in China feel certain phonemes easy or difficult in a samepronunciation. This is a reflection of negative transfer from moth-way and produce English sounds in the enunciation which areer tongue to L2. In the future, their incorrect pronunciation willbe fosilized.distinguishing from those of other regions. Take the learmers fromShanghai, Guangdong and Henan Provinces as example. Shang-By listing sounds of English and Chinese, the possible pho-hai learners have no problem in pronouncing the fricatives 10/, 1netic problems of students can be found and teachers of Englishwill know from that where to put their stress in teaching and0, 1JI, 13/ and the africates /A心[, /d3/, but in approximant /r.They pronounce hr/ in "read" as N in "Iead". Guangdong learmerspractice of pronunciation, that is ,focusing on the most problem-can not make 10/, 10/,/J/, 131 and 1t[/, /d3/; while learmers fromatic sounds. Problematic sounds do cause dificulties, neverthe-Henarhave no such dificultieses as those from Shanghai orless, they are not anything that cannot be leamed and mastered.Guangdong, but they often read the word "think" as "sink" or "The key is to train students to develop positive transfer and makethem have more practice. Only when teachers have a clear mindwine" as "vine' , take just a few examples. Here some importantabout their students" problems so far as pronunciation is con-questions are raised --why do the leamers in different areas ofcermed (it is particularly important for students who speak di-China make English sounds with strong Chinese regional features? What are the regional featureslike? What teachingalects), their teaching of sounds is no more a headache job.methodology should be adopted? .. They remain being furtherReferences:studied)[1] Giegerich H J.English PhonologyM]London:CUP,1992.It should be admited that the sounds that do not exist either[2] HU Zhuang-lin.Linguistics:A course Book [M].BeijingBeijngin English or in Chinese tend to be dificult for learmers, but "University Press,2001.some dfferences between languages do not always lead to signif-[3] Hook R.A handbook of English Pronunciation[M].London:Ad-icant learning dificulties (Odlin,1989:17)". They are not anythingward Amold Ltd,1982.that cannot be learmed, especially those sounds only a litle bit[4] James C.Contrastive Analysis[M].Singapore:Addison Wesleydifferent in the manner of articulation or the place of articulation,Longman, 1980.or in the tongue position and the opening of mouth. For example,[5] Lado R.Lingustics Across Cultures[M].Ann ArborUniversity ofthe English nasal and voiced consonant / is similar with Chi-Michigan Press,1957.nese sounds ending with /ng/. They are produced in almost same- n:CUP,1989.mechanism--the soft palate is down so the air passes out through中国煤化iooancurthe nose, the vocal cords vibrate and it is quite a long sound.Vowels seem to cause litle difculty because they involve lessHCNMHG191 赦慢讲坛汆心:本栏目贵任编辑:杨菲葬万万数据