The Production and Perception of English Word-final Stop Contrasts by Native Speakers of English and Mandarin

• Main Author: 黃怡嘉
• Other Authors: Lai, yuwen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/29684280651915925436

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 外國語文學系外國文學與語言學碩士班 === 99 === The present study aims to investigate the production and perception of English-word final stops by native English (NS) and Mandarin speakers (NNS), as well as to further examine the effects of place of articulation on distinguishing voicing contrasts.The study contained a production and perception test. Five correlates to voicing contrasts were examined in the production test: vowel duration, closure duration, closure voicing, F1 offset frequency and release burst. The perception test is an identification task which examined the perception of voicing contrasts by NS and NNS.The results indicated that vowel duration is an important cue for both NS and NNS in the present study. For NNS, vowel duration seems to be easier to master than other correlates. The smaller difference of vowel duration between voiced and voiceless stops shows that vowel duration might be adopted by NNS to signal word-final voicing contrasts. The magnitude between voiced and voiceless stops also affects voicing perception. Native language phonotactics as well as its sound inventory was also taken into consideration when investigating the topic in the present study.