英文摘要 |
It is the goal of this article to investigate, on the basis of phonetic contrast, CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) learners' production of Mandarin fricatives and affricates. Six male subjects from Japan, Vietnam, and Thai, together with one native speaker of Mandarin Chinese were recruited. The topic of CFL learners' difficulties in terms of Mandarin fricatives and affricates is not new in essence. However, most of the literature is based on researchers' observation or perception judgment. A gap emerges between the subjective observations and what is reflected in acoustic phonetics. The basic motivation of this article is, among others, to provide CFL learners as well as teachers with an empirical study on phonetic contrast in cues like onset duration, lower band of energy frequency (peaks), and CV transition. The results indicate that most of the CFL learners produce Mandarin fricatives and affricates purely by substituting them with the similar or equivalent alveolar fricatives of their own languages. Some implications, theoretical as well as empirical, are also discussed. |