语言学视角下沈阳英语学习者英语前元音产出的声学探究

同时选取了 16 个含有英语前元音的单词以及 16 个含有汉语前元音的单词为研究语料，并利用 Praat 进行语音标注以提取第一共振峰及第二共振峰作为分析数据，同时还利用 Excel 以及在线函数编辑器对数据进行汇总整理分析，以图示方式解析沈阳市英语学习者与本族语者发音的异同。

1Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background
Language is an important medium in communication. It is the combination of the following three elements, namely, speech sounds, vocabulary and grammar. According to Ladefoged and Keith (2015), speech sounds are more effective in conveying information compared with non-verbal gestures, and it is known that the linguistic representation of sounds is syllable which can be further pided into vowels and consonants. Among them, the former usually stands as the nucleus in each syllable, the production of which determines the intelligibility of the sounds. Thus, it is of vital importance for L2 learners to master the vowel production.
Based on the studies of Wu and Lin (2014), from the perspective of physiology, vowels are the movement of air through the opening and closing of the glottis and produced by the resonance of oral cavity, nasal cavity and cavum pharynges. Acoustic analysis of vowels takes formant frequencies as the major parameters to discuss the features. In recent years, relevant research has been focused on the invention and innovation of technical instruments for doing acoustic analysis, by which the extraction of formant frequencies and duration is much easier to conduct. Researchers like Fry et al (1962) analyzed the speech perception of English vowels, by which they discovered that the two parameters, F1 and F2, were able to represent the major characteristics of vowels. Besides, studies on vowels from abroad tend to be detailed and field-expanded. For example, Jackson and McGowan (2009) made use of visual inspection diagram to explore the constriction of high front vowels. Compared with the research conducted overseas, studies at home mainly focus on the general description and analysis of vowels by means of some theories like, Error Analysis, Error Pattern, and Language Transfer. Furthermore, domestic researchers in these days start to explore the L2English production of learners from dialectal regions. This is because China is huge country with people in different regions speaking varied dialects, which, according to the investigation, has a great impact on the acquisition and production of English sounds. It is really tough to have a complete description for all the regions. Nevertheless, researchers have conducted some related studies, and the achievements are attractive, however, current research only focuses on some typical dialectal regions like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shandong. Shenyang, as the representative city in Northeast of China, possesses some special dialectal features, which have a great impact on the English pronunciation of people in this area. Therefore, certain research on Shenyang need to be replenished and enriched.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research
In English language system, some vowels are pronounced in a similar manner, which makes listeners feel difficult to tell them apart. These differences can be described mainly from the place and manner of articulation, which is exactly the points that make Chinese learners confused in production. For English learners whose native language are Chinese, the production of vowels is influenced by Mandarin in some way. In addition, under the influence of dialects, the performance of pronunciation will be more perse. It is vital to study the dialectal influences on the pronunciation of English learners. That is why Shenyang English learners are selected as the research object in this thesis.
Among the studies, vowels are of great significance for many scholars, therefore, the number of the research on vowels is surging. Traditionally, the relevant research focused on the perception, acquisition, and production of vowels. The Contrastive Analysis, Interlanguage Hypothesis and Language Transfer are frequently applied in some empirical studies. It can be seen that the research theories are slightly limited. Meanwhile, the Range of Quantitative Variations in Phonetic Values, first put forward by Chinese scholar Ma, is a newly applied theory in expounding the phonetic features of front vowels.
This thesis is designed to analyze the acoustic features of English front vowels produced by SyELs under the framework of the Range of Quantitative Variations in Phonetic Values for the purpose of discovering the differences between ANSs and SyELs and further exploring the underlying reasons.
This study is of both theoretical and practical significance. On one hand, this studywill complement the applied research of RQVPV and make it more generalizable. Since Shenyang City is the typical dialectal region in Northeast of China, this study can show the production of English front vowels based on the statistical analysis, which will provide some guidance in the improvement of English in some dialectal areas, and contributions to English teaching and learning in China.
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2Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 The Related Terms
This section describes some basic terms used in this study, such as vowels and formants.
2.1.1 Vowels
Vowels and vowel-like sounds are made by varying the geometry of the pharyngeal and mouth cavity, but without any major obstruction or impediment to airflow (Clark & Yallop, 2000). Basically, there are three independent processes in the vowel production. First, the airflow, which generates from the lung, will escape from the larynx and be transferred into glottis for further trimming. Then, this airflow will smoothly pass the vocal tract with vibrational activities, and finally be produced by the cooperation of tongue and lips in the mouth.
Accordingly, vowels are shaped in the vocal tract, in the mouth primarily. Since the tongue’s movement pides the scape within the mouth in various ways to produce vowels, vowels will be discussed in terms of the tongue (Tsung, 2008).
English vowels are also produced by tongue’s movement. Generally speaking, English vowels can be classified into two categories, namely, 12 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs. Another detailed pision of vowels is made by scholars in terms of the tongue positions. A front vowel is achieved if the highest point of tongue is in the front of oral cavity. Therefore, the acoustic features of a front vowel are accurately reflected by analyzing its tongue position. Accordingly, there exists 4 English front vowels, involving /i/, /i:/, /e/, /?/. However, scholars like Lagefoged (2006) also adds /ei/ into the list of front vowels because of its construction. It is obvious that two single purevowels in /ei/ are both front vowels, indicating that the tongue positions are always placed in the front part of oral cavity. However, diphthongs are comprised of two single pure vowels in which there is a glide between them (Zhang, 2018). It is not accurate to regard vowel /ei/ as a front vowel due to this glide. Thus, this thesis just focuses on the front vowels in the monophthongs. They are subpided as follows:
High front tense unrounded vowel: /i:/
High front lax unrounded vowel: /i/
Mid front lax unrounded vowel: /e/
Low front lax unrounded vowel: /?/
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2.2 The Previous Studies of Vowels
In general, studies on front vowels are mostly contained in the research of vowels or monophthongs. For the research abroad, the attention is turned into the cross-language acquisition, perception and production of vowels, while domestic researches tend to be more detailed and quite a few scholars put their emphasis on the comparative studies between English and Chinese, and the dialectal influences.
2.2.1 Studies Abroad
The systematic studies of vowels in the Western countries can be traced in the 1940s. In the 1948, Joos first proposed the relation between the tongue positions and formants. Since then, more scholars turned their interests into the research of formants. Delattre (1951) made a detailed comparative study on tongue and formants, and found that there existed an inconsistent relationship between the tongue positions and F1. Besides, he believed that the contraction of entire tongue was connected with the F2 values.
Peterson and Barney (1952) explored the properties of vowels by observing the variation of frequencies on the spectrograms. This extracting method was convenient and easy-operated, which attracted more researchers to probe into the phonetic analysis.
Paget (1976) studied the acoustic features of British English. At that time, the research on English vowels has been gradually detailed and field-expanded. Some scholars have analyzed the acquisition and production of L2 learners and studied their deviations. In fact, the discussion of vowels was chiefly dominated by the experimental speech analysis in which the deviations were concerned. In 1987, Flege explored the accuracy of vowel pronunciation of L2 learners, indicating that they could correctly pronounce vowels in the absence of the same vowels in their native languages. However, a sufficient second language environment need to be provided for them to assist the results.
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Chapter Three The Theoretical Framework ......................................... 19
3.1 Range of Quantitative Variations in Phonetic Values .................................... 19
3.2 Language Transfer ................................ 20
3.3 Sound Pattern Theory ....................... 21
Chapter Four Methodology ............................ 25
4.1 Research Questions ............................ 25
4.2 Participants ................................... 25
4.3 Data collection .................................... 26
The Chapter Five Results and Discussions ...................................... 31
5.1 Phonetic Features of Front Vowels Produced by SyELs ................................ 31
5.1.1 Acoustic Features Reflected by F1 .................................... 31
5.1.2 Acoustic Features Reflected by F2 .................31

5The Chapter Five Results and Discussions

5.1 Phonetic Features of Front Vowels Produced by SyELs
It is known that F1 and F2 are able to reflect the tongue height and advancement respectively when a certain vowel is produced. To be detailed, the tongue height can be shown in terms of F1, that is, a higher F1 is, a lower tongue will be. But it does not go true for tongue advancement. That is to say, the lower F2 is, the backer the tongue will be, or if F2 is higher, the tongue will be more advanced. In this way, the acoustic features of target vowels are explicitly presented by these two formants. Table 5.1 and Table 5.2 respectively exhibit the F1 and F2 values that have been extracted from all the investigated sounds.
5.1.1 Acoustic Features Reflected by F1
As mentioned above, the tongue height of a vowel is negatively correlated with its value of F1. Table 5.1 shows the average F1 value of 50 SyELs when they are producing selected words.

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6Chapter Six Conclusion

6.1 Major Findings
This thesis aims to explore the English front vowels produced by Shenyang English learners. All the F1 and F2 values are extracted by Praat and further processed through Excel and SPSS for data analyzing. Besides, all the statistical results are demonstrated and explained by means of the Range of Quantitative Variations in Phonetic Values and Acoustic Vowels Charts. The major findings are shown as follows:
Generally, the SyELs can produce the vowels in similar tongue positions as ANSs, by which it could be inferred that they share the similar production manner. The vowels they made can be ranked in terms of the tongue height and advancement. To be specific, the tongue height of the SyELs can be ordered as follows: /i:/>/i/>/e/>/?/. Additionally, the tongue advancement of SyELs can be ranked as follows: /i:/>/i/>/e/>/?/.
Compared with the production of ANSs, some typical features can be found from the production of SyELs. Based on the Range of Quantitative Variations in Phonetic Values and the Acoustic Vowels Charts, the vowel /i/ is characterized by either higher or lower in terms of tongue height, while either more advanced or backer in terms of tongue advancement. For vowel /i:/, the tongue height is featured by either a higher or lower position, whereas the tongue advancement is featured by either more advanced or backer position. In addition, the vowel /e/ is achieved in a lower tongue height with a backer or more advanced tongue position. For vowel /?/, the tongue height is either in a higher or lower position, whereas the tongue advancement is either in a more advanced or backer position. These results further indicate that SyELs do not master the articulation of English front vowels accurately, and the deviations are made by learners.
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