An Experimental Research on Tonal Errors in Monosyllables of Standard Spoken Chinese Language Produced by Uyghur Learners

Abstract

This article uses phonetic experiments and quantitative statistics to investigate the lexical tone production by Uyghur learners of Standard Spoken Chinese Language (hereinafter referred to as SSCL) and compares the performance of Elementary, Advanced, and Native SSCL speakers, then uses micro-analysis of the nature, types, and acoustic performance characteristics of the errors that occur, to help us further understand these errors accurately and clearly. It is found that when Uyghur Chinese learners produce SSCL tones, their biggest problem is that the difference between Tone 2 and Tone 3 is not as obvious as that of Native SSCL speakers. This finding agrees with previous studies on Xinjiang students’ perception of SSCL lexical tones, which found that these 2 tones are often mistaken for one another. This study also finds that the tonal space of Elementary speakers is not as wide as Advanced and Native speakers’, and the minimum F0 value in Uyghur speakers locates in Tone 3 rather than Tone 4; the reasons behind these findings need to be studied later.