In the studies of second language phonology, it is found that the pronunciation of learners often deviates from that of native speakers of the target languages. It is found that L2 learners’ pronunciation deviates from that of native speakers and is deeply influenced by their L1 language (Chen, 2003). Thus, the role of L1 transfer seems to play a very crucial role in L2 phonological acquisition (Chen, 2003).
Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without prior knowledge of the language being spoken. Phonology is about patterns of sounds, especially different patterns of sounds in different languages, or within each language, different patterns of sounds in different positions in words etc. The available phonological elements and structures are the same for all words and can be described in terms of mouth gestures and noises. This “grounding” of the system is called phonetic interpretation. Phonetic interpretation is the same for all words. Learning about the sound structure of a language is a complex process that involves anatomy, physiology and acoustics of the human vocal tract.
It also includes the nomenclature for the vocal articulations and sounds used in speech, as represented by the International Phonetic Alphabet. The phonological features of a language are organized into segments, syllables and words. Often there are extreme changes in sound of morphemes (or words) in different contexts. Knowledge of language sound structure unfolds as children learn to speak and the variation in sound structure differs across dialects and across time (Chen, 2003).
According to a study titled ” English Vocabulary Learning by Chinese Students: How Can Phonology Help?” by Monica Hill, it has been found that the phonological dimension of word learning had a significant effect on Chinese learners who were learning English as a second language (Hills, 1999). Study by Alan Juffs (1990) reveals that in the case of Chinese undergraduates’ oral production of English lexical items, factors affecting both placement and phonetic stress errors involved native language patterns, syllable structure, and the lexical item’s position in the rhythmic sequence.
Many aspects of the English phonological system cause difficulties for Chinese learners. Some English phonemes do not exist in Chinese; stress and intonation patterns are different. Moreover, unlike English, Chinese is a tone language. This means that it uses the pitch – highness or lowness- of a phoneme sound to distinguish word meaning. In English, changes in pitch are used to emphasize or express emotion, not to give a different word meaning to the sound (Shoebottom, 2007).
English has more vowel sounds than Chinese, resulting in the faulty pronunciation of words like ship/sheep, it/eat, full/fool. Dipthongs such as in weigh, now or deer are often shortened to a single sound. Chinese learners find it difficult to hear the difference between l and r, and so may mispronounce rake and rice as lake and lice. A major problem is with the common final consonant in English.
This feature is much less frequent in Chinese and results in learners either failing to produce the consonant or adding an extra vowel at the end of the word. For example, hill may be pronounced as if without the double ll but with a drawn out i, or as rhyming with killer. The difficulty of pronouncing individual English words is compounded by problems with intonation and this leads to heavily accented English in the case of many Chinese learners. Sometimes, it’s difficult to understand even learners with perfect grammar.
. Rochet (1995) pointed out that L2 learners tend to perceive L2 sounds in terms of their L1 category and misperception may lead to misproduction, and this explains the “foreign accent”. Traditionally, Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) has been used to predict the difficulty that L2 learners may encounter when acquiring a second language. It was initially expected that by the L1 and the target language, similar aspects should be easier to acquire than new or different aspects.
But then, practically this was not so. Similarities cause greater confusion. When two phonological elements are seen by L2 learners as nearly the same, they will be settled for the L1-based version for that phoneme rather than create a new one. Although CAH failed to predict accurately the errors that L2 learners may make, Eckman (1977) believed that CAH can be maintained as a viable principle of L2 acquisition if it can be modified to incorporate certain principles of universal grammar. Thus, an improvement on CAH is to contain the idea of markedness.
The Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) claimed that the more marked the differences between the L1 and the L2, the greater the difficulty there would be for acquisition. The Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis (ISCH) predicts that implicational universals also influence the structuring of interlanguage phonology. Traditional Chinese syllable models allow variable templates, ranging from a minimum of V to a maximum of CGVX. (C=initial consonant, G=onglide, V=nucleus, X=ending [nasal or offglide]). The only possible onset cluster in Chinese is CG (Chen, 2003).
Onset and coda clusters are both allowed in English. English syllable structure is (C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C). It has a number of 3-member onsets that are completely resolvable into their component parts. In other words, given an onset such as ABC, both AB and BC will be well-formed 2-member onsets, and A, B, and C will be permissible 1-member onsets. English onset position allows clusters up to three consonants while Chinese at most allows one consonant occurring with glide, [j] or [w]. Most of the time, no consonant clusters will be licensed in the onset position. Thus, we can foresee that Chinese learners may encounter problems when acquiring onset clusters in English as second language (Chen, 2003).
“Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis: The universal generalizations that hold for the primary languages hold also for interlanguages.” (Eckman, 1991:24). ISCH makes predictions only on the basis of implicational universals. Markness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) makes predictions on the basis of implicational universals and the differences between the native language and target language. Three points may be implied through these theories (Chen, 2003):
- Those areas of the target language which differ from the native language and are more marked than the native language will be difficult.
- The relative degree of difficulty of the areas of the target language which are more marked than the native language will correspond to the relative degree of markedness.
- Those areas of the target language which are different from the native language, but are not more marked than the native language will not be difficult.
According to the first item above, we can predict that Chinese ESL learners will have difficulty with onset clusters because one singleton onset is the least marked structure. The more number of the onset cluster, the more marked it is According to a study Chinese have no problem pronouncing the consonant [s], [p], [t], and [k], since these can be found in their L1 inventory. However, as for the [¨] which is not in their L1 category, L2 learners may have some degree of difficulty.
Assume that L1 phonological inventory is the initial state of L2 phonological grammar, then we would expect to see that ESL learners will not have any problem with L2 sounds which can be found in their L1 inventory. The same rule is applicable to L1 syllable structure, in which L2 learners try to modify the onset clusters because they have different structure in their native language. They modify the clusters in such a way that it conforms to implicational universals.
This indicates that properties of UG (e.g. implicational universals) not instantiated in the L1 grammar (onset clusters) are still available to L2 learners at intermediate stages. In other words, “UG aids acquisition”, which upholds the idea that L2 learners have full access to UG rather than partial access. Chinese subjects tended to alter the more marked, tri-consonant clusters, more frequently than the less marked, bi-consonant clusters (Chen, 2003).
English is an alphabetic language whereas Chinese is an ideographic language (Hsieh, 1996). In alphabetic languages spoken language is presented at the phoneme level. In ideographic languages, each ideograph represents a unit of meaning, generally a word or a morpheme. It is believed that an ideographic language tends to be more meaning-based; while an alphabetic language tends to be more sound-based (Hsieh, 1996).
Therefore, the process of reading Chinese characters may differ from that of reading words written in an alphabetic language such as English. In reading Chinese characters, a total visual perception of the symbol is primarily connected with its meaning, and how it is pronounced becomes secondary. However, in reading an English word, the visual perception of a symbol is primarily connected with its pronunciation and its meaning is derived from auditory decoding.
Phonological strategies are defined as the methods of decoding words by their speech codes, e.g., phonetics, sound, and pronunciation. Chu-Chang & Loritz (1977) found that Chinese ESL learners applied more visual strategies on English word-recognition tests. Shwedel (1983) examined whether Chinese students adopted phonological strategies from an alphabetic language, English, to read Chinese. He concluded that phonological recoding was not intrinsic to reading text in the Chinese system. Hayes (1988) investigated how native and non-native Chinese readers identified Chinese words. The result showed that, at the word-level word recognition, Chinese readers made significantly more phonological errors than either graphic or semantic errors (Hsieh, 1996).
A study by Hsieh (1996) that compared strategies used by the Chinese and American subjects on English word-recognition tests showed that there is no significant difference between Chinese and American subjects’ application of semantic, graphic, and phonological strategies on English word-recognition tests. However, it also revealed that Chinese subjects applied more semantic strategies than other strategies on both Chinese and English cued-recall tests. But Chinese subjects who had spent a longer time in the United States tended to use phonological strategies on LTM cued-recall tests (Hsieh, 1996).
One Chinese subject from the 2-4-year group emphasized that using sounds was the quickest way to memorize the words and using meaning was the most accurate way to memorize the words, both in Chinese and in English. According to him – unfamiliar English words that were hard to pronounce are best learnt using graphic strategies instead of phonological. He revealed that in memorizing the sound he was more likely to spell the word incorrectly in English but not in Chinese.
Since in English one or two letters can contribute to one sound, the same sound could consist of 102 different spellings. Thus he felt that English words are best learnt spelling and meaning first, and then the pronunciation. However, since English is a phonological language, the role of sound should be taken into careful consideration when teachers teach English to EFL learners whose learning environment lacks English speaking and listening stimuli.
Bibliography
Hill, Monica (1999). English Vocabulary Learning by Chinese Students: How Can Phonology Help?. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Association of Applied Linguistions (Tokyo, Japan). Web.
Chen, Szu-wei (2003). Acquisition of onset clusters by Chinese learners in Taiwan. Web.
Hsieh, Grace Liang-Tsu (1996). Study of Chinese Students’ Chinese/English Decoding Strategies. Hong Kong Journal of Applied Linguistics. Volume 1. Web.
Shoebottom, Paul (2007). The differences between English and Chinese. Web.
Juffs, Alan (1990). Tone, Syllable Structure and Interlanguage Phonology: Chinese Learners’ Stress Errors. IRAL, Volume 28, Issue 2 page 99-117. Web.
Chu-Chang, M & Loritz, D. J. (1977). Even Chinese ideographs are phonologically encoded in short-term memory. Language Learning, 27, 341-52.
Hayes, E. B. (1988). Encoding strategies used by native and nonnative readers of Chinese Mandarin. The Modem Language Journal& 72, 188-195.
Shwedel, Allan M. (1983). Must we use phonology to read? What Chinese can tell us. Journal of Reading, 26, 707-713.