300 / 2021-08-30 11:03:58

Analysis of Deviation in English Lexical Stress Production by Chinese Students

Chinese students,English lexical stress,Deviation analysis

English lexical stress is of vital importance in studies of English phonetic acquisition. Although research concerning perception and production of English lexical stress at home and aboard cover a wide range and are rich in total, studies of Chinese students’ production of English lexical stress are still needed to be enriched. This paper collects 10 non-English major students’ recording of 160 English disyllabic words to investigate the deviation in English lexical stress by Chinese students. This study is analyzed in seven aspects involving vowel duration ratio analysis, pitch range ratio analysis, energy ratio analysis, contribution degree analysis of the above three acoustic ratios, deviation analysis of Chinese students’ production of English lexical stress, morphemic structure difference analysis and gender difference analysis. Results find that: (i) Chinese students have iambic tendency in English disyllabic word production and such tendency is most obvious in pitch range ratio. (ii) Energy ratio has the highest contribution degree in highlighting trochaic words, while pitch range ratio has the highest contribution degree in highlighting iambic words. (iii) The results of mono-morphemic words’ stress production are the best, while the results of compound words’ stress production are relatively the worst. (iv) Male’s production of English disyllabic words is closer to the native speaker’s production of English disyllabic words. This paper not only enriches the study of Chinese students’ English lexical stress production, but also provides certain reference value for Chinese students in English lexical stress acquisition.