Typology of Convergences and Divergences of English Monophthongs by Chinese Northeastern EFL Learners

The present paper investigates the acoustic features of English vowels by EFL learners (English as a Foreign Language) from Dalian (DL) and Harbin (HRB) dialectal regions, both of which belong to the Chinese Northeastern area. Eleven English monophones, i.e., /i/, /u/, /a/ etc. are selected as target samples and their corresponding F1& F2 formants are employed as parameters to approach the research aim. Through analyzing the acoustic results, this paper focuses on exploring the degree of phonetic transfer of dialects (L1) onto English (L2). The Speech Learning Model (SLM) is adopted to examine the differences caused by the dialectal accent. The results show that, with regard to the tongue position of vowels, EFL learners from these two dialectal regions do show a great divergence from the American (AM) native speakers. As for DL learners, it is difficult for them to make tense-lax contrasts in/i/-/ɪ/, /$\varepsilon$/-/æ/ and /u/-/ʊ/. Specifically, /i/ and /u/ are affected by DL dialect, which can be explained by SLM. On the other hand, /$\alpha$/ produced by DL and HRB learners is similar to that of American speakers. Besides, DL and HRB learners produce longer vowels in duration.