從發音與聲學的對比分析探討美國學生的華語擦音

An Acoustic Contrastive Analysis on an American Learner's Mandarin Fricatives

本文以個案研究的方法透過聲學分析來比較華語與美語在擦音及塞擦音上的異同，以中美各一位發音人，就華語的三對（塞）擦音[ts, ts（上標h）, s][ts, ts（上標h）, s][tc, tc（上標h）, c]可能出現的語境做錄音，然後採用Praat作聲學分析，分別從長短、噪音峰點(peak)、輔音與元音的過渡等角度逐一比較，結果發現：美國發音人顯然以美語的擦音[∫]的位置，或者直接遷移(transfer)，或者誇張(hypercorrection)，來發華語這三組（塞）擦音。因此在聲學特性上反映了這幾個語音發音時舌面與磨擦點過於前面，導致了「外國腔」的感知現象。透過此個案研究，比較能確實掌握語音偏誤的原因，然後以過去的教學理論與經驗為基礎，提出可行的教法，提升教學品質。

The basic goal of this article is to explore the acoustic properties of American learners of Chinese in the three set of fricatives and affricatives:[ts, ts(superscript h), s][ts, ts(superscript h, s][tc, tc(superscript h), c], which are absent from the phonetic inventories of American English. Two informants, one native Chinese (Beijing) and one American learner (6 months of learning) participated in this project. The recording is followed by acoustic analysis on the basis of Praat, with an attempt to investigate the duration, the peaks of frequencies, and the transitions between onsets and vowels. The essential finding is that the three sets of fricatives are either directly transferred from the pronunciation of American [∫] or hyper-corrected by exaggeration, giving rise to the foreign accent in perception. Some pedagogical methods are provided, theoretically as well as empirically. It is our intention to attract more studies in the future from the perspective of acoustic experiments.