An acoustic study of affricates produced by L2 english learners in Harbin

Abstract

The present study focuses on the acquisition of English affricates by L2 learners in Harbin where a major variety of Mandarin is spoken, and explores possible interferences from L1 leading to L2 learners’ deviations in pronunciation. Specifically, features of L2 learners’ productions are compared with native speakers by using different acoustic parameters so that the differences between the two groups could be discovered. The results can help find out whether the differences or the similarities between L1 and L2 sounds contribute more to L2 speech acquisition. Independent sample t-test and affricate acoustic patterns are used in the comparisons. The results show that affricates in English are not completely well acquired by L2 learners from Harbin. Specifically, L2 learners’ production of /tʃ/ has a longer Duration of Frication (DOF) and a weaker plosion than that by native speakers, and their production of /dʒ/ is longer and stronger in its frication part compared to that by native speakers. The similar durations of GAP between the two groups of speakers indicates that the articulatory precision of /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are well acquired. /tr/ and /dr/ are produced by L2 learners in a longer and more tense manner. The unsatisfactory acquisition, according to the analysis, is caused by both similarities and differences of linguistic features in L1 and L2. The Transfer Theory and the Speech Learning Model (SLM) are adopted to explain the results.