Comparative Study on the Supre-Segmental Phonemes between English and Sichuan Dialect

Abstract

Supra-segmental phonemes, the prosodic features of a language, including stress, pitch, intonation, rhythm and juncture, play a very important role in distinguishing meaning in English. This paper analyzes the supra-segmental phoneme differences between English and Sichuan Dialect from the following four aspects: word stress, intonation, rhythm and junture. We are convinced that if language teachers in China have some knowledge of the transfer theory and if they know clearly the similarities and differences of the supra-segmental phonemes between English and their mother tongue, it would be much easier for them to know the language focuses and difficulties for the learners and their teaching would be more effective.